Had a good chat with Bruce Allen about time series analysis. Those guys apparently have algorithm  for getting periodic signals in two regimes, 

a) when the S/N / period is << 1

b) when the time sampling Dt is >> Period and sparse, in the sense that there are big "holes" in the data set

We should see whether that's applicable to e.g. RR Lyrae in PanSTARRS1

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.0023v2.pdf

Perhaps that's something that DFM would be interested in looking at in July.