blind astrometry parameters, fast K corrections, edge-on galaxies

I worked out the complete list of free parameters (or equivalent) for the blind astrometry system. There are about 10, which is too many; it would be nice if we could remove some or optimize over them. There are some short-term prospects for getting the list down to of order 5, which would be much more manageable. I also worked on outputting better stellar catalogs for Sam's use.

In related news, we decided to try to solve some GALEX images, which may be non-trivial given the large wavelength difference between GALEX (UV) and USNO (visual). Sam is very optimistic, I am guardedly optimistic, Schiminovich thinks we are very unlikely to succeed!

Morad and I discussed, and Morad went some way towards implementing, a K correction method for his next project that will be super-fast. Because the project (the cross-correlation of spectroscopic SDSS LRGs with essentially all imaging sources) involves doing between 10⁷ and 10⁸ K corrections, it needs to be fast. Fortunately, it does not have to be supremely precise, so our approximations are likely to be allowed.

Anil Seth visited from UW today. He showed us some very nice results on resolved stellar populations and vertical structure in nearby, edge-on, low-mass disk galaxies. Apparently the Milky Way has a thinner disk than most of these neighbors (interesting), but it might be comparing apples to oranges, given that the MW is so much more massive.