METHOD OF RUNNING PARABOLAE - SPECTRAL AND STATISTICAL PROPERTIES OF THE SMOOTHING FUNCTION

Analytic expressions in a general form are derived for the expectation of functions related to the smoothing the astronomical signals using local approximations with additional weights. No restrictions are made on distribution of the times of the signal. Applications are made for polynomial fits of orders 0 and 2 and weights p(z) = 1 and (1 - z(2)) (2). These variable weights ensure that the smoothing function will be both continuous and differentiable, which is important for determinin g the extrema and the shape of the variations. Special attention is pa id to evenly spaced time series data, which if their number is large e nough will allow one to obtain analytic expressions for the main funct ions.