Some Suggestions for Writing up Asteroid Lightcurve Observations for Publication

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Over the years I have spent many hours re-constructing photometric observa- tions from published works that would have been much easier if the authors had provided full and accurate details of the observations being reported. In this paper I will present the essential elements of reporting that render the photometric observations reported most useful and convenient for future analysis. The underlying principle to keep in mind is that the composite lightcurve you construct may not be right, or may not serve the purposes of some future research project, such that someone may need to recover your original observations as a time series rather than just the composite lightcurve presented. Other ancillary information should be provided to assist in using the data in combination with observations at other times, e.g. the aspect data (sky position, phase angle, light time correction if applied, etc.), and the color band and magnitude scale information. In a composite lightcurve figure, vertical (magnitude) offsets applied night to night should be indicated (in the figure or in a data table), days of obser- vation should be plotted with different symbols and identified, and if cov- erage on a single night exceeds the rotation period such that the time series is "wrapped", it should be possible to determine the actual time of obser- vation of each datum. In constructing a composite, it is essential that the period used to fold the data be the exact value stated so that the exact observation times can be reconstructed from the composite. Ideally, all data presented should also be made available in electronic form in a public archive (this will be a topic of considerable discussion at the meeting). Another essential feature is to reference and critically evaluate any pre- vious lightcurves of an object that can be found in the literature. In addi- tion to checking for consistency of results and possibly incorporating other observations in the analysis, the task of reconstructing observations from ancient publications will serve by example (good or bad) the importance of unambiguous presentation of results, and what is required to achieve that. At the risk of committing a blunder myself, I will illustrate my presentation with an example of an "ideal publication" of a lightcurve result, done in the style of the Minor Planet Bulletin.

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