New observer, feedback on a YZ Boo time series

Hi all,

I’m new to variable star photometry and still building intuition on what counts as a good result, so I’d appreciate a review of this one. The report and a screenshot of the VPhot metrics are attached.

Target is YZ Boo. My measured range came out around 10.29 to 10.74, which is close to the expected range (about 10.33 to 10.73 V), so overall I think the light curve is decent. The check star held around 0.015 mag scatter and the comp stars stayed flat.

This data is untransformed. I plan to shoot a few standard fields the next clear night to do the transform for future sessions. I suspect that’s why my check star came out about 0.05 mag off catalog (measured 11.02 vs 11.08), a zero-point offset I’m hoping would shrink once I’m transformed.

Two things I want to flag:

  1. This data is from a color camera (ZWO ASI 294 MC Pro), specifically the green channel. The FITS headers had FILTER=TG, but VPhot’s upload overwrote it to V, so the report shows V. I believe it should be submitted as TG, not V. I haven’t found a way to correct this without hand editing the report file before submission, which I was hoping to avoid. Is there a proper way to handle this to signal TG instead of V?
  2. I noticed some dew forming on the corrector at the end of the session as I was shutting down, and I think that is what drives the shift in the metrics (SNR, FWHM, sky background) in the back half of the run. I suspect that since the check and comp stars stay flat through the tail, the dew formed evenly, but I wanted a second opinion. I was leaning toward not submitting because of the dew, but given that the range looks right, I’m wondering if I’m overthinking it.

Grateful for any feedback, especially on the TG/V question and whether the dew-affected tail is a concern.

Thanks,
Jeff

Attachments
AAVSOReport_YZ-Boo_V_20260814.txt (37.8 KB)

Hi Jeff, I use photo green filter or clear monochrome images with VPhot. In the first case I just change V to TG, in the second one - from V to CV in the reports text files. It might be needed to use VPhot’s Rename option for set V band to all images before reduction.

Fortunately, aperture photometry is not capricious and it may forgive haze, muddy sky or even dew. Of course, it is not good, but acceptable sometimes.

Thanks Mikhail, appreciate the feedback.