You're welcome to discourage everyone from asking for the disk, of
course. Sure the UCAC project is from the 'olden days' but who cares?
There are still people working on it, collecting a pay check and writing
papers etc. You can decide to ignore the project and not ask for a disk
or show your interest and send an email explaining why you want one.
USNO and the UCAC project will not crumble because it got more requests
than it could handle. The reverse *could* happen. Why do UCAC4 when no
one wanted UCAC3?
Use your own judgment and only ask for the disk if it has meaning to
you. But don't worry about poor ol' USNO. If I worked at USNO and read
sentiment like that below I'd be insulted. I wouldn't need protection
from the evil hordes of astro geeks who send emails asking for my
product. I'd welcome the interest and be proud of how relevant my
project is. If I ran out of resources to send out disks I'd stop sending
them out and reply with a simple 'sorry, no more disks to be had'. I'd
then count on the generosity of the astro community to distribute the
data in other ways. This is what happened with UCAC2. We're still here,
as is USNO.
But, that's just my opinion. Mr Zacharias may well curse me and agree
with you :)
Sander
John Mahony wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Sander Pool <[email protected]
> <mailto:sander_pool%40pobox.com>>
> >
> > I trust the USNO is a mature organization that can throttle the number
> > of discs it sends out or put usage restrictions on what people can ask
> > them for.
>
> (Well I misread that as "put restrictions on which people can ask for
> them", so my first paragraph isn't directly applicable, but I'll leave
> it in since it helps explain the situation)
>
> The problem with restrictions is that many amateurs use catalogs from
> the USNO for many various "real science" uses, but they often have no
> formal affiliation with established science/educational organizations,
> so there's no practical way to "regulate" distribution of discs from
> the USNO that would still allow these amateurs to get them.
>
> But the USNO also has limited resources for this. Much USNO
> activities, especially producing astrometric catalogs like this, is a
> throwback to the days when accurate navigation was much more directly
> related to star positions. These days, for an admiral in the Navy's
> budget office in the pentagon (or wherever it is), it probably looks
> like a low priority- interesting to geeks but of limited practical
> value to the military. There are perhaps a few hundred users who have
> a legitimate scientific need for these catalogs, and the impression I
> get is that there are only a few people at the USNO involved in
> produing them. In other words, it's a very low budget operation.
>
> So they're forced to rely on individuals to be reasonable in making
> requests for discs. For earlier catalogs, it has been common for them
> to run out of discs and have no funding for further distribution. But
> by then it's usually available online through CDS/Vizier, although
> downloads of the full catalog would require a very fast connection.
>
> If you're planning to convert the catalog for use by CdC users, that
> sounds like a reasonable reason to request a disc. But it would be bad
> if every CdC user requested his own disc from the USNO.
>
> -John
>
> >
>
