Community Affairs and Communications

• Contacting many of the DSS and GSC-II patrons and collaborators to inform them of the continuing STScI commitment to the project despite recent events.

• Vacating room G17: In cooperation with Facilities and CNS, cleared additional items from G17 and N112. Revised plans for reconfiguration of CASB archive, office space in N112 and N112C, and intermediate-term storage in Bloomberg.
• Consultant Alessandro Spagna arrived on 8 February to work on NGST Guide Star issues.
• Revised FY99 budget and spending plan.
• Contacted JHU and HQ about recently approved NASA grant for work on Sky Partitioning.
• Reviewed candidate resumes for GEMINI and STIS BOP positions.
• Fabrizia Guglielmetti arrived on 8 February to take up a one-year OATo appointment in support of GSC-II production.
• Bucciarelli and Casalegno visited STScI in February.
• Volpicelli (OATo) plans to visit STScI in late March.

HST Operations

• Investigated and filed Bad GS Alerts for 6 GSPRs (Guide Star Problem Reports). Of these, five were finelock failures. The other problem was coarse track failure due to the faintness of the GS.
• Participated in the monthly NGSS Users meeting.

• Finder chart production disrupted for 2 days – problem finally tracked down to corrupted data file.

• Conducted a test of generating charts in two bandpasses for simulated STIS fixed target observations. Plan to support BOP screening for actual Cycle 8 STIS fixed targets in March.

• Used Besanson galaxy model to simulate star counts in NGST FOV for near-IR bandpasses.
• Testing model against observations of NGP using GSC-II data and EIS observations of the S-HDF. Initial results suggest that the star density in the K-band is only 50% of previously assumed values.

Plate Scanning

• Scanned low priority SERC-J and POSSI-E plates until latest POSS-II plate shipment arrived near the end of the period.

• Concern about slowness of shipments from ROE.

• Replaced the arc lamp used in one GAMMA.

Archive Maintenance

• Transfer of data to MOD slightly disrupted due to drive failure. Drive being replaced.

• No progress reported in investigation of a GETIMAGE failure with the DSS-I, first reported by the NAOJ Astronomical Data Analysis Center. Resolution of this matter depends on the availability of DSS-I personnel no longer associated with CASB.

Plate Processing at ECF and STScI

• Pipeline processing was slowed at both sites due to processing crowded fields and diversion of resources to recalibration for GEMINI fields at STScI.
• Trained ops staff in photometric recalibration pipeline and transferred primary responsibility for production to ops.

• The NT/Compass ApplyCalib task was modified by adding (and testing) a command line parser, adding code to simplify reading the GSP (Guide Star Parameter file) which hold the default values of the qualifiers and the fortran code was revamped, streamlining the algorithm. All of the changes were done with a standalone version (not hooked up to the Compass database). Currently ApplyCalib is being hooked back to the database and testing from the database will occur after this.

• Software to export data in SKYCAT format almost completed.

• Created an astrometric mask from roughly 100 XJ plates using the new plate solution task correcting for refraction and using an equidistant projection.

• Completed a redesign of the CLASSIFY task for compatibility with database access on NT. All program functionality exclusive of IO has been verified to be consistent on NT and VMS versions. Completing this port required enhancement of the CONVERT_RANKS program to produce rank files in FITS format.

• The software that creates training sets and decision trees for classification is being consolidated into a single program. This will allow users to define training sets for any plates using a mouse and display, and quickly and easily turn them into decision trees for the classifier.

• A general method was added to the PHOTOSOL task for extrapolation and star rejection. Testing and tuning experiments are in progress.
• Added the southern R survey to the general functions table and modified the general function code to be more general and user-friendly. Changed the method of fitting the general function to the photometric calibration curve.

• Tests using an overlap region show that the photometry is adequate for the fields that do have no or few GSPC-II stars; but the vignetting mask should be improved.
• Reduction of Run 17 at KPNO is nearing completion.
• Re-reduction of old GSPC2 data is following the plan; Run 9 at KPNO were completed this month. Preliminary results show that all the data should be reprocessed in the same way.
• Unfortunately, the plans to complete the GSPC-II paper have been delayed by recent events, but analysis indicates very good agreement among data at the three major observatories: KPNO, CTIO, and ESO.

• Resumed copying high-priority science fields to MOD for delivery to OATo colleagues.
• Star counts in the Blanco 1 field are being compared to the Bahcall/Soneira galactic models as a final check of the errors in the absolute calibration of the photometry.

SCANNING
 

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897	895	0	895	99.8		1
POSS-II F	897	875	6	881	98		1
POSS-II N	897	723	0	723	81		1
AAO-SES	606	587	0	587	97		1
PPARC-ER	288	252	0	252	88		1
AAO-SR	109	109	0	109	100	S2	-
UKST-IR	894	50	0	50	6		2
SERC-J/EJ	447	388	25	413	92	S1	2
POSS-I E	112	48	26	74	66	S3	3
POSS-I O	880	0	0	0	0		3

S1. Low priority program to rescan crowded fields (|b|<30) originally done with 25 mu scans. The total number of S scans includes the 2 for the LMC and SMC plus 4 others with |b|>30 performed for research or STIS BOP support.

S2. This survey is an on-going low level-of-effort collaboration between the ST ScI and the AAO. About 25-50 plates have been added in each of the past few years.

S3. Low priority scans of the POSS-I -24 deg and -30 deg zones.
 
 

COMPRESSION
 

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897	625	62	687	77		2
POSS-II F	897	868	0	868	97		1
POSS-II N	897	0	0	0	0		3
AAO SES	606	572	0	572	94		1
PPARC ER	288	245	0	245	85		1
UKST-IR	894	0	0	0	0		3

MO DISK ARCHIVING
 

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897	673	67	740	82		4
POSS-II F	897	392	68	460	51		3
POSS-II N	897	0	0	0	0		4
AAO-SES	606	245	0	245	40		3
PPARC-ER	288	127	0	127	49		3
AAO-SR	109	0	0	0	0		4
UKST-IR	894	0	0	0	0		5
SERC-J/EJ	894	892	0	892	100		-
POSS-I E	880	779	451	835	95		2
POSS-QV	613	613	0	613	100		-
SERC-QV	94	94	0	94	100		-
GPO/BB	88	88	0	88	100		-

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

GSC-II PLATE PROCESSING
 

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I E	880	0	0	0	0		3
POSS-QV	613	0	0	0	0		3
POSS-II J	897	741	11	752	84		1
POSS-II F	897	762	13	775	86		1
POSS-II N	897	0	0	0	0		4
SERC-J	894	504	8	512	57		1
South-F	894	590	69	659	74		1
UKST-IR	894	0	0	0	0		4
South-SR	109	12	2	14	13		2
South-QV	94	13	0	13	14		2

GSC-II COMPASS DATABASE LOAD
 

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I E	880	0	0	0	0		3
POSS-QV	613	0	0	0	0		3
POSS-II J	897	351	0	351	39		1
POSS-II F	897	605	0	605	67		1
POSS-II N	897	0	0	0	0		4
SERC-J	894	0	0	0	0		1
South-F	894	435	1	436	49		1
UKST-IR	894	0	0	0	0		4
South-SR	109	0	0	0	0		2
South-QV	94	0	0	0	0		2

GSC-II Dataset for V2.0 delivery (117 Fields)
 

Item	Count	% done	Notes
Plates available	230/234	97
Plate processed	226	95
DB Load	131	56
Photometric Calib	157	67
Astrometric Calib	0	0
Reclassification	0	0

GSPC-II OBSERVATIONS
 

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I	584	565	4	569	97		1
POSS-II	142	109	28	137	96		1
SERC	894	891	0	891	99		1

GSPC-II REDUCTIONS
 

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I	584	563	0	563	96		1
POSS-II	142	109	28	137	96		1
SERC	894	654	103	757	85		1