Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Period, epoch and prediction errors of ephemeris from continuous sets of
  timing measurements   Space missions such as Kepler and CoRoT have led to large numbers of eclipse
or transit measurements in nearly continuous time series. This paper shows how
to obtain the period error in such measurements from a basic linear
least-squares fit, and how to correctly derive the timing error in the
prediction of future transit or eclipse events. Assuming strict periodicity, a
formula for the period error of such time series is derived: sigma_P = sigma_T
(12/( N^3-N))^0.5, where sigma_P is the period error; sigma_T the timing error
of a single measurement and N the number of measurements. Relative to the
iterative method for period error estimation by Mighell & Plavchan (2013), this
much simpler formula leads to smaller period errors, whose correctness has been
verified through simulations. For the prediction of times of future periodic
events, the usual linear ephemeris where epoch errors are quoted for the first
time measurement, are prone to overestimation of the error of that prediction.
This may be avoided by a correction for the duration of the time series. An
alternative is the derivation of ephemerides whose reference epoch and epoch
error are given for the centre of the time series. For long continuous or
near-continuous time series whose acquisition is completed, such central epochs
should be the preferred way for the quotation of linear ephemerides. While this
work was motivated from the analysis of eclipse timing measures in space-based
light curves, it should be applicable to any other problem with an
uninterrupted sequence of discrete timings for which the determination of a
zero point, of a constant period and of the associated errors is needed.

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The categories of this paper are: adap-org
29
The categories of this paper are: funct-an
16
The categories of this paper are: stat
0
The categories of this paper are: hep-ph
37
The categories of this paper are: supr-con
4
The categories of this paper are: cond-mat
1
The categories of this paper are: cs
12
The categories of this paper are: nucl-th
32
The categories of this paper are: atom-ph
13
The categories of this paper are: quant-ph
33
The categories of this paper are: plasm-ph
7
The categories of this paper are: hep-th
28
The categories of this paper are: alg-geom
36
The categories of this paper are: cmp-lg
34
The categories of this paper are: chem-ph
17
The categories of this paper are: q-fin