Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Yesterday afternoon my thesis student also showed up, surprisingly without calling up first this time.

It was the same as before, though, asking me about how a certain variable is used in the book that is his main source for the calculations and for the codes. I tried to answer as best as I could, and I emphasized that if the panel ever accepted everything else he has talked about and reach even halfway towards that detail of his work, they would already be satisfied.

That’s when he dropped the bombshell on me: on his determination of starting and ending times of lunar eclipses, he is from 15 to 30 minutes off from what is given on the NASA sites.

First of all, I told him not to rely solely on the NASA sites, because there are several other resources on the internet besides NASA, including astronomy
sites in Europe and Japan.

Second, I told him to limit his comparisons to phenomena visible from the Philippines. He was looking at data for eclipses in the Ukraine, and even if he got those times right, it would not be acceptable to his panelists to be too ambitious that his software will be used in that land.

Third, I told him to record all of his data comparisons. Worse comes to worst, that is what he will present to his panel like the basic physics experiments with error percentages. That is what they will be interested in: the amount of effort he put into verifying his program’s results, even if they are not totally accurate.

Today another of my astronomy students showed up asking for consultation with the use of their zodiac constellation calendar. It didn't take more than 10 minutes; again she just got scared with the variety of possible questions that still relies on the same basic principles to answer.

I really need to get a transparency version of the calendar for demonstrating to the students how it is used. It’s better than the alternative of me going to each and every one’s table to show them the proper way of getting the correct answers to our sample questions.