One of the features that the Smart Telescope Working Group is including in the evolving AAVSO system for accepting smart telescope photometry is the ability to send a message back to the observer with feedback about the data that they submit. Right now we’re working towards sending one message in response to each observing session (overnight observing period).
At first, we were setting this up so that the response would be sent by email. But over the years, I’ve heard a number of amateur astronomers complain about organizations that don’t honor their personal preference for SMS text over email. And so we’ve talked within the STWG about letting each smart telescope observer register their preference for email vs SMS text. But now that we’ve started putting these messages together, we realize that they contain multiple paragraphs of information and multi-column tables that summarize information about the session. We have trouble seeing how that could ever be packed into an SMS text message. Or even a series of SMS text messages.
And so, here’s my question: how upset would you be as an observer if we only provided feedback in the form of emails? Is this a problem for you? What if we offered a choice of either a big “meaty” email or an SMS text message that just had a URL link to your own personal browser version of the email (so no email would be sent)? What’s your preference?
– Mark