At mid-day I spun out an extended fantasy with Andy Casey (Monash) about a general and generalizable spectroscopic software toolkit that could do data analysis, spectral extraction, parameter estimation, and radial-velocity measurement in arbitrary two-dimensional spectrograph imaging. One of the related ideas is to build low-dimensional descriptions of the calibration of the spectrograph to pool calibration data and reduce pressure on calibration observations. Another idea is to avoid going to one-d spectra, except when necessary (almost never necessary). Another is never to deconvolve to high resolution (spectro-perfectionism is a deconvolve–reconvolve method, to which I object). Etc. It would be a lot of work, but it could revolutionize the business.
Late in the day I had a conversation with Megan Bedell (Flatiron) about possible high-level goals for the Terra Hunting Experiment, which is finding Earth analogs. Some of the goals might be about discovery rate (or future-discounted discovery rate) and some might be about statistics (what is the abundance of Earth analogs?). Different high-level objectives lead to different operational decisions. Interesting. And hard.
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