== merges SDSS Stripe 82 source classifications
== from various literature sources. creates a
== data challenge from resulting catalog
== mostly tested on python2.7, requires pandas

====== USAGE ======
## get data
python download.py
## merge classifications to create catalog
python merge.py
## view catalog
emacs catalog.txt
## create challenge from catalog.txt
python challenge.py
## the folder challenge contains the data challenge,
## see readme there for more instructions


====== STUDYING CLASSIFICATION OF VARIABLE STARS ======
There are two primary ways to begin classifying / clustering sources in
SDSS Stripe 82:
     1) catalog.txt: the ids in this file refer to the light curves in
        data/AllLCs. you can visualize the light curves, check that
	the purported classifications make sense, derive features, etc.
     2) challenge/ folder: develop a classifier using the
        challenge/train light curves and classifications in
	challenge/train_classifications.txt. you can predict the classes
	for the light curves in challenge/test and then compare your
	predictions to test_classification.txt. see challenge/readme and
	challenge.py for more information on how the training / test
	sets were chosen

====== MAKING CHANGES TO THE REPO ======
You are encouraged to develop the code base of this project and
push changes to the repo. Collaborators on the project will not be
able to use any code which relies on local changes
(changes you have not pushed to the repo). To ensure that the
code running on your machine will run identically for
collaborators it is strongly recommended that after making and pushing
changes you clone the repo from github and then rerun everything.
The results are what any collaborator will see.


====== DATA SOURCES TO CHECK ======
The following articles contain classifications of some SDSS Stripe 82 sources.
We should make sure we have all of these in our catalog and then move these
references to SOME CURRENT DATA SOURCES section.

- Quasar Classification, Peters et al. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/811/2/95

====== SOME CURRENT DATA SOURCES ======

= SDSS STRIPE 82 VARIABLE SOURCE CATALOG (stripe82candidateVar_v1.1.dat)
  - http://www.astro.washington.edu/users/ivezic/sdss/catalogs/S82variables.html
  - this is the starting data, has source IDs and quasar classification
  - merge.R merges source classification provided by articles into this data

= SDSS VARIABLE SOURCE LIGHT CURVES
  - http://www.astro.washington.edu/users/ivezic/sdss/catalogs/S82variables.html
  - this data is only necessary as a check on classifications

= RR LYRAE (apj326724t2_mrt.txt)
  - http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/708/1/717/suppdata/apj326724t2_mrt.txt  
  - link to article:
    http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/708/1/717/meta
    
= ECLIPSING BINARY (apj383813t2_ascii.txt)
  - http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/731/1/17/suppdata/apj383813t2_ascii.txt
  - link to article
    http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/731/1/17/meta

= HIGH-AMPLITUDE DELTA SCUTI STARS (delta_scuti.txt)
  - http://vizier.cfa.harvard.edu/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=J/MNRAS/424/2528
  - link to article
    http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012MNRAS.424.2528S