scooped!

My loyal reader knows that earlier this week I got interested in (read: annoyed with) the standard description of the optimal extraction method of obtaining one-dimensional spectra from two-dimensional spectrograph images, and started writing about it on a trip. On return to New York, Lily Zhao (Yale) listened patiently to my ranting and then pointed out this paper by Zechmeister et al on flat-relative extraction, which (in a much nicer way) makes all my points!

This is a classic example of getting scooped! But my feeling—on learning that I have been scooped—was of happiness, not sadness: I hadn't spent all that much time on it; the time I spent did help me understand things; and I am glad that the community has a better method. Also, it means I can concentrate on extracting, not on writing about extracting! So I found myself happy about learning that I was scooped. (One problem with not reading the literature very carefully is that I need to have people around who do read the literature!)