refereeing, selecting, and planning

I don't think I have done good job of writing the rules for this blog, because I don't get to count refereeing. Really, refereeing papers is a big job and it really is research, since it sometimes involves a lot of literature work or calculation. I worked on some refereeing projects today for a large part of the day. Not research? Hmmm.

Also not counting as research: I worked on the Gaia Sprint participant selection. This is a hard problem because everyone who applied would be a good participant! As part of this, I worked on demographic statistics of the applicant pool and the possibly selected participants. I hope to be sending out emails next week (apologies to those who are waiting for us to respond!).

Late in the day I had a nice conversation with Stephen Feeney (Flatiron) about his upcoming seminar at Toronto. How do different aspects of data analysis relate? And how do the different scientific targets of that data analysis relate? And how to tell the audience what they want to know about the science, the methods, and the speaker. I am a big believer that a talk you give should communicate things about yourself and not just the Universe. Papers are about the Universe, talks are about you. That's why we invited you!

AAAC, day 2

Today was the second day of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee meeting. The most interesting material today was a report on proposal success rates and proposal pressures, particularly focusing on the NSF programs. The beautiful result is that none of the standard myths about proposal over-subscription are correct: It is not coming from an increase in the size of our community, it is not coming from faculty at smaller or non-traditional research institutions, it is not coming from any simple demographic changes, it is not coming from any increase in typical proposal budgets, and it is definitely not that people are writing proposals more hastily and less well. And these myth-bustings are empirical findings from data gathered by a subcommittee of the AAAC.

It appears that the vastly increased proposal pressure is coming from the resubmission of proposals rated Very Good to Excellent, which are getting rejected more and more because the funding rate is now so low. That is, there is a runaway process in which when the funding rate gets low enough, very good proposals are getting rejected with good comments, and the proposers resubmit, thereby increasing further the proposal pressure and reducing further the funding rate. This effect is expected to increase further when LSST comes on-line, because the NSF AST budget has to absorb operations.

#ArloFest, day 1

Today was the first day of Landolt Standards & 21st Century Photometry in Baton Rouge, organized by Pagnotta (AMNH) and Clayton (LSU). I came to speak about self-calibration. The day started with a historical overview by Bessel (MSSSO), who gave a lovely talk filled with profiles of the many people who contributed to the development of photometric calibration and magnitude systems. Many of the people he talked about (including himself) have filter systems or magnitude systems named after them! Among the many interesting things he touched on was this paper by Johnson, which I have yet to carefully read, but apparently contains some of the philosophy behind standard-star systems. He also discussed the filter choices for the Skymapper project, which seem very considered.

Suntzeff (TAMU) gave an excellent talk about the limitations of the supernova cosmology projects; his main point is that systematic issues with the photometric calibration system are the dominant term in the uncertainty budget. This is important in thinking about where to apportion new resources. He made a great case for understanding physically every part of the photometric measurement system (and that includes the stars, the atmosphere, the telescope, and the detector pixels, among other things). I couldn't agree more!

Grindlay (CfA) blew us away with the scale and content of the DASCH plate-scanning project at Harvard. It is just awesome, in time span, cadence, and sky coverage. Anyone not searching these data is making a mistake! And, as we were recovering from that, Kafka (AAVSO) blew us away again with the scale and scope of the APASS survey, which was designed, built, operated, reduced, and delivered to the public almost entirely by citizen scientists. It is dramatic; we are not worthy!

There were many other great contributions—too many to mention them all—but the day ended with a crawfish boil and then Josh Peek (STScI) and I at the bar discussing recent explosive conversations in the astronomical community around TMT and development in Hawaii.

One last thing I should say: Arlo Landolt (LSU) has had a huge impact on astronomy; his work has enabled countless projects and scientific measurements and discoveries. The development and stewardship of photometric standards and systems, and all the attention to detail it requires, is unglamorous and time-consuming work, ill-suited to most of the community, and yet absolutely essential to everything we do. I can't thank Landolt—and his collaborators and the whole community of photometrists—enough.