lcplot – a lightweight program for plotting light curves of variable stars using AAVSO data
lcplot is a command-line program that plots light curves of variable stars using data from the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO).
lcplot is written in Perl 5. Apart from the Perl executable, lcplot also needs the Perl modules DateTime, Astro::Time, and LWP::Simple, and gnuplot as plotting engine.
To plot visual estimates and V band observations for a star during the last N days use:
lcplot STAR CONSTELLATION BANDS NDAYS
To optionally highlight observations done by OBSERVER.
lcplot STAR CONSTELLATION BANDS NDAYS OBSERVER
where:
BANDS is a comma separated list including any of: Vis,B,V,R,I
OBSERVER is the AAVSO observer code
In both cases the result is a PNG file with the plot.
This will plot the last 200 days of observations for khi Cygni, visual observations and photometric V band, without highlighting any observer:
lcplot khi Cyg Vis,V 200
It will produce a PNG image with name "Cyg-khi.png".
If we add to the same line an AAVSO observer code, for example, "OBS":
lcplot khi Cyg Vis,V 200 OBS
It will higlight observations contributed by observer OBS using blue crosses.