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19. Low Signal-to-noise Analysis

Stéphane Guilloteau
guillote@iram.fr
IRAM, 300 rue de la Piscine, F-38406 Saint Martin d'Hères, France

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Low Signal to Noise (S/N) is unfortunately a frequent situation in mm astronomy. Since S/N increases only as the square root of the integration time, it may not be feasible at all to go from a case of low S/N to a case of even ``decent'' S/N. Thus the astronomer has to worry about interpreting properly low S/N data. The risk of over-interpretation in such cases is to be considered seriously. This lecture will give you some hints, as well as point out some traps which must be avoided.



Subsections

Anne Dutrey