12.8 Postmeasurement Uncertainty Reduction and Light Curve Folding
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Figure 12.4 shows the result of Fig. 12.3 being resampled into 100 bins. As can
been seen, the scatter in the magnitude change has improved, indicating that the
uncertainties have been reduced, allowing a reasonable trend line to fit. However, the
reduced number of data points within the transit second of the plot means that we
have lost some details that are of some interest. This example shows that reducing
the uncertainties by binning has a significant effect on the cadence, especially in this
case, where the cadence is in excess of 1700 s. Increasing the number of bins does
not in this case significantly improve the details in the light curve.
The light curves above illustrate that when you are folding multiple observations
into a single phase space, a plot is a powerful tool in time series observations. It also
illustrates that although binning data is a viable approach to decreasing uncertainties,
it is not suitable for all observations, especially with time-series observations with
low cadence.