The programme kokpol can compute average values for a number of
stars, the nightly mean values for stars, normal points, and can do
phase corrections for stars that vary periodically.
The programme needs a file, say, star.sta with the numbers of the
stars for which averages have to be computed. In addition, the epoch
of zero phase (last 4 digits of the Julian day number), period (in
days), coordinates (
and 
in decimal form) for the
calculation of the heliocentric correction to the normal points. If
data is not relevant, put zeroes in the file.
kokpol prompts for filenames, and (in a self explanatory way) asks
what kind of averaging procedure has to be applied. The output file
from polred is the input file for kokpol. The output files
plotfin.sa for plotting the nightly means and plotfil.sa for
the normal points are shown. if asked for. The user specified output
file contains the results in tabular form for printing.
Note that if there is more than one input file, the programme
pickup has to be run first to collect into one file all the stars
that have been specified in the star.sta file. The copy
command under DOS can also be used to do this.
The averaging procedure weights the observations with the inverse
square of the errors, taking the larger of E
and E
, making
sure that the weights never exceed the theoretical maximum given by
simple photon shot noise.