Peer Review of PDS 28 Sgr Volume
Colleen A. McGhee, including input of Richard G. French
February 4, 2005
We organize the review directory-by-directory, in the order in which we think an interested scientist would visit them. Then, at the end, we make some general comments.
In the following, an annotation of ÔFineÕ means that we found the contents to be clear and unambiguous. We did not check the syntax of every data field.
AAREADME.TXT Ð This file gives an excellent overview of the volume contents and organization. There are no recommended changes.
ERRATA.TXT Ð Very brief, which is fine.
VOLDESC.CAT Ð Fine.
BROWSE Directory
BROWINFO.TXT Ð Good, very clear and complete description of files.
ESO1M subdirectory Ð Fine
ESO22M subdirectory Ð Fine
IRTF subdirectory Ð Fine
LICK1M subdirectory Ð Fine
MCD27M subdirectory Ð Fine
PAL200 subdirectory Ð Fine
CALIB Directory
CALINFO.TXT Ð No calibration files.
CATALOG Directory
CATINFO.TXT Ð OK Ð Nice summary of other files in this directory.
ESO1M_DATASET.CAT Ð There seems to be an error in the Processing and Data sections of this catalog. In each, it says that four quantities are provided in the tables, but in fact there are only 3 columns. The quantity Ònormal optical depthÓ is not included, and should be removed from this description. Additionally, the catalog lists four values of quality flag, while BROWINFO.TXT lists five possible values.
Done. All data files have the full seven columns with dummy values when data is not available. This was done to simplify the development by users of software to manipulate the data. Descriptions have been updated accordingly. Inconsistencies in the quality flag descriptions have also been corrected.
ESO1M_HOST.CAT Ð Fine
ESO1M_INST.CAT Ð Fine
ESO22M_DATASET.CAT Ð Here there is the same problem with the Processing and Data sections of the catalog as for the 1-m dataset catalog: there are in reality only 3 columns, though it says there are 4. Again, the number of quality flags and their definitions are inconsistent with other definitions, e.g. BROWINFO.TXT, DATAINFO.TXT
ESO22M_HOST.CAT Ð Fine
ESO22M_INST.CAT Ð Fine
IRTF_DATASET.CAT Ð Instead of the 4 columns listed in the data files, there are in fact 7. Also, the quality flag definitions are inconsistent with other files, e.g. BROWINFO.TXT, DATAINFO.TXT
LICK1M_DATASET.CAT Ð See comments for IRTF_DATASET.CAT
MCD27M_DATASET.CAT Ð See comments for IRTF_DATASET.CAT
MISSION.CAT Ð Fine
P200_DATASET.CAT Ð See comments for IRTF_DATASET.CAT
PERSON.CAT Ð Fine
REF.CAT Ð Fine
Done. All of the DATASET.CAT files have been edited to remove Ôcut & pasteÕ errors, provide consistent descriptions of the quality flag values and the BROWSE & DATA file holdings and structures.
DATA Directory
DATAINFO.TXT Ð There might be a sentence like ÒFor bad or missing data, values are replaced by a constant as described by the label,Ó when discussing the columns and/or the quality flags.
Done.
ESO1M subdirectory
ESO22M subdirectory
IRTF subdirectory
LICK1M subdirectory
MCD27M subdirectory
PAL200 subdirectory
We plotted stellar intensity vs. radius for every file in the data directory without difficulty. In reviewing the *.LBL files, it appears that the descriptions for the observations was copied from the PAL200 description in large part, since each contains the following text:
Ex: ES1_EPD.LBL:
DESCRIPTION É.
A total of 64,000 raw frames were recorded, each with an integration time of 0.15 seconds. Observing conditions became partly cloudy during egress observations of the B and A rings; consequently, the photometric quality of these observations is not as good as for the corresponding ingress observations. Absolute timing was achieved by chopping with the secondary mirror exactly 2 arcsec north for exactly 2 sec (13.3 frames) at intervals of 1 minute, and for exactly 4 sec on the hour, using trigger pulses from a crystal-oscillator continuously synchronized with shortwave radio time signals from WWVB. Absolute occultation timing was reconstructed with an accuracy of 0.05 sec.
We would recommend simply deleting this phrase from the non-Palomar DESCRIPTION fields.
Done.
We spot-checked label entries such as telescope coordinates and ring data set information, and found no errors.
As mentioned in the CATALOG directory DATASET.CAT files, there seems to be some inconsistency about the definitions for Quality Flags in the documentation.
Corrected.
DOCUMENT Directory
DOCINFO.TXT Ð Fine
GEOMETRY.pdf Ð Fine
GEOMETRY.TXT Ð Fine
MODEL.pdf Ð Fine
MODEL.TXT Ð Fine
We did not proofread all the polynomial coefficients in the DOCUMENT files, but we did spot-check them.
GEOMETRY Directory
GEOMINFO.TXT Ð Fine
ESO1M subdirectory Ð Fine
ESO22M subdirectory Ð Fine
IRTF subdirectory Ð Fine
LICK1M subdirectory Ð Fine
MCD27M subdirectory Ð Fine
PAL200 subdirectory Ð Fine
We did not proofread all the polynomial coefficients in the GEOMETRY files, but we did spot-check them.
INDEX Directory
Files look fine, but we did not use PDS software to try to read them in and navigate via the labels.
SORCDATA Directory
DATAINFO.TXT
ESO1M subdirectory
ESO22M subdirectory
IRTF subdirectory
LICK1M subdirectory
MCD27M subdirectory
PAL200 subdirectory
Overall, we found this volume to be well-organized, clearly documented, and complete.
The directory structure was fairly simple and straightforward, which made it easy to navigate.
We did not try to read the files using PDS-compliant software Ð that is, we did not read the LBL files and then try to read the associated TAB files. We assume this is checked by the PDS software.