CASB Report for
August, 2000
·
Completed the export of GSC2.1.1 into FITS files from
COMPASS and delivered to
GEMINI, VLT, and OATo on DLT.
·
Final POSS-II J plate received – completes all-sky J
coverage.
·
McLean
presented GSC-II papers at Data Mining meeting in Garching and the Wide Field
Astronomy meeting in Preston.
·
Discussion
with AAO director (Boyle) resulted in tentative agreement for UKSTU to complete
missing POSS-II IV-N fields.
·
B. Bucciarelli
visited from OATo and edited the GSPC-II publication.
· Conducted tours of CASB for the STScI family day.
· Continued review of the CASB WWW pages.
·
Continued
planning for the 6th annual GSC-II meeting, scheduled for Oct 19-20
2000.
· Reviewed eleven Guide Star Problem Reports (GSPRs) this period. Of these problems, eight were fine lock failures due to close binaries and the other three GSs were fainter than expected. Two of the latter GSs are embedded in nebulosity making brightness determination difficult and the third was a misclassified blend of stars. A Bad GS Alert was filed for each GS.
· Investigated two different GS problems in failed HST attempts of observations in the globular cluster Omega Cen. Both GSs were taken from GSC-I. Made a detailed comparison between the GSC-I region and ZZR, the special catalog for Omega Cen derived from a CTIO 4-meter plate. Recommended that all observers specify the ZZR catalog in Phase 2 for proposals in this area.
· Continuing work on the Bright Object tool for the Visual TargetTuner (VTT). Doggett and Asbury tentatively estimate a completion date of mid-February at the latest. Currently in the middle of the actual coding of the Bright Object tool, following the agreed upon design.
· Morrison prepared a white paper on the guide star catalog for NGST and submitted it to the NGST Operations Concept Committee. Sections of this document will go into the NGST Operations Concept. This document will be placed on the CASB web site after its completion.
· Performed a test on selecting targets and associated guide stars for NEXXUS alignment test using the Tycho-2 catalog. Found a distribution of pairs for target stars brighter than 10th magnitude.
·
Prepared a
plan to migrate DSS data from CDROM to hard disk. The plan will be implemented
as soon as possible.
·
Continued
scanning POSSII-N plates at the beginning of the period and then started
scanning the latest shipment of UKST-IR plates.
·
Sent a large
shipment of scan tapes to Cal Tech, including 10 replacement tapes for old
unreadable tapes.
·
Quickly corrected the water damage to GAMMA2 reported
last month. The electronics were removed, cleaned and reinstalled. Found that
scan data were then noisier than before the incident, but determined that the
cause was a loose ground wire that was soon repaired.
·
Later
performed minor adjustment to GAMMA2 laser positioning through the neutral
density filter set. Two plates required
rescans due to misalignment and clipping of the beam due to the alignment
problem.
·
Currently
performance is nominal for both GAMMAs.
·
Started
compressing scans of the UKST-IR survey.
Modified the compression code to allow the IS prefix for this survey.
·
Continued
compression of the POSSII-N scans.
· Rewrote all but three of the scan MODs with known problems. Investigating problems with the last three.
· Continued writing MODs of UKST-IR scans.
·
No progress
reported in investigation of a GETIMAGE failure with the DSS-I, first reported
by the NAOJ Astronomical Data Analysis Center.
·
Essentially
completed processing of the POSSI-red plates with only a handful of fields
remaining. Several of these plates will require rescanning.
·
Began COMPASS
plate loading.
·
Coupled plate
loading activity with photometric and astrometric recalibrations to ensure that
newly loaded plates receive current calibrations.
·
Coordinated
plate loading activity with data loading into the HSM system of various
processing files (e.g.. cutout images, sky model files...).
· Completed the export of GSC2.1.1 into FITS files from COMPASS. The storage requirement for this subset of the catalog is 56.1 GB. This includes1892 calibrated and cross-matched plates, with approximately 399.4 million sources with multiple bandpasses.
· Detail enhanced WWW documentation for the GSC2.1.1 to include links references to the source calibration, HTM partitioning, and sky coverage.
· The export production discovered ten corrupted database files. Further investigation into these files is in process.
· Delivered GSC2.1.1 to GEMINI, VLT, and OATo on DLT.
· Currently revising the Object Matching production task to use the HTM indexing for more efficient and faster cross-matching. This will provide a single task means for cross-mapping plate and/or external reference catalogs into the COMPASS master source index.
· As part of the continuation of consulting arrangements with Wil O'Mullane, expanded the JAVA ShowSky image and catalog visualization tool to include simultaneous access to GSC-2 export catalog, COMPASS, DSS 1 and 2, GSC-1, Hipparcos, and Tycho. The SDSS Science Archive access was designed and implementation is being developed in coordination with JHU.
· Delivered and installed the ShowSky 2.0 to several internal GSC-II team collaborators for review.
· Ran database defragmentation on COMPASS to reclaim all disk space following the final calibration tasks.
·
Designed a
FITS file to be used with the classification suite of programs, including
RANK_FEATURES, CLASSIFY, the OC1 decision tree generating program, and the training
set file utilities. This file will ultimately contain information about
classes, features, and training set distribution, as well as the decision tree
itself. It will support versatile experiments with different numbers of
features and classifications.
·
Modifying the
OC1 decision tree program to output the decision tree into a FITS file. This
required solving several technical problems with regard to compiling and
linking with the appropriate version of the CFITSIO library.
·
Reviewed the
CLASSIFY task and identified lines of code that need to be changed to support
flexibility in classes and features.
CALIBRATIONS: Photometry (GSPC-II and DSS-I and -II)
·
B. Bucciarelli
from OATo visited STScI and worked with CASB staff, reviewing and editing the
paper, “GSPC2.1: First Release of an All-Sky Set of (B)-V-R Photometric
Calibrators for Schmidt Surveys.” The
paper describes the GSC-II program, data reduction, and the quality of the
photometric sequences. It will be submitted soon to “Astronomy and Astrophysics.”
Along with this publication, 623 GSPC-II sequences will be released and made
available through ftp from both STScI and OATo.
· Prepared four MODs for Daniela Carollo’s science project and sent them to OATo.
· In collaboration with Mignani, we are trying to evaluate the proper motion of a black hole located in the binary system, N23203203594 (11:18:10.77 +48:02:12.25). The GSC-II coordinates for this object from different epochs are very important. The science involved is extremely appealing because it may contribute to the theory of black hole evolution. We now have a rough value of its pm, but are working on a more precise value.
· Spectra of a number of candidate high proper motion stars were obtained with the APO 3.5m telescope. Data is still being reduced.
· Scanned two plates and rescanned a third for two scientific collaborations: the above project with Mignani and another with van Altena at Yale, distinguishing QSOs from galactic stars via proper motions.
Survey |
Goal |
Previous Month |
Current Month |
Current Total |
% done |
Notes
|
Priority |
|
POSS-II
J |
897 |
901 |
0 |
901 |
100 |
S4 |
1 |
|
POSS-II
F |
897 |
910 |
0 |
910 |
100 |
S4 |
1 |
|
POSS-II
N |
897 |
838 |
9 |
847 |
94 |
|
1 |
|
AAO-SES |
606 |
606 |
0 |
606 |
100 |
S4 |
1 |
|
PPARC-ER |
288 |
270 |
0 |
270 |
94 |
|
1 |
|
AAO-SR |
118 |
118 |
0 |
118 |
100 |
S2 |
- |
|
UKST-SR
|
112 |
50 |
0 |
50 |
45 |
S5 |
3 |
|
UKST-IR |
894 |
462 |
53 |
515 |
58 |
|
2 |
|
SERC-J/EJ |
447 |
443 |
0 |
443 |
99 |
S1 |
2 |
|
POSS-I
E |
106 |
106 |
0 |
106 |
100 |
S3 |
3 |
|
POSS-I
O |
936 |
175 |
2 |
177 |
19 |
|
3 |
|
Rescans |
|
24 |
1 |
23 |
|
|
|
|
Survey |
Goal |
Previous Month |
Current Month |
Current Total |
% done |
Notes
|
Priority |
POSS-II
J |
897 |
893 |
4 |
897 |
100 |
|
2 |
POSS-II
F |
897 |
897 |
0 |
897 |
100 |
C1 |
1 |
POSS-II
N |
897 |
251 |
40 |
291 |
32 |
|
3 |
AAO SES |
606 |
572 |
0 |
572 |
94 |
|
1 |
PPARC ER |
288 |
245 |
0 |
245 |
85 |
|
1 |
UKST-IR |
894 |
0 |
28 |
28 |
3 |
|
3 |
Survey |
Goal |
Previous Month |
Current Month |
Current Total |
% done |
Notes
|
Priority |
POSS-II
J |
897 |
902 |
0 |
902 |
100 |
|
4 |
POSS-II
F |
897 |
878 |
0 |
878 |
98 |
|
3 |
POSS-II
N |
897 |
278 |
11 |
289 |
32 |
|
4 |
AAO-SES |
606 |
587 |
0 |
587 |
97 |
|
3 |
PPARC-ER |
288 |
250 |
0 |
250 |
87 |
|
3 |
AAO-SR |
109 |
73 |
0 |
73 |
67 |
|
4 |
UKST-IR |
894 |
149 |
176 |
325 |
36 |
|
5 |
SERC-J/EJ |
894 |
892 |
0 |
892 |
100 |
|
|
SERC-J/REPAIR |
48 |
48 |
0 |
48 |
100 |
|
|
SERC-J/15mu |
449 |
449 |
0 |
449 |
100 |
|
5 |
POSS-I
E |
933 |
928 |
0 |
928 |
99 |
|
2 |
POSS-I
REPAIR |
198 |
198 |
0 |
198 |
100 |
|
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 |
936 |
880 |
37 |
917 |
94 |
G1 |
3 |
POSS-QV |
613 |
2 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
|
3 |
POSS-II
J |
897 |
887 |
0 |
887 |
99 |
|
1 |
POSS-II
F |
897 |
897 |
0 |
897 |
100 |
|
1 |
POSS-II
N |
897 |
44 |
0 |
44 |
5 |
|
4 |
SERC-J/EJ |
894 |
822 |
0 |
822 |
92 |
|
1 |
South-F |
894 |
815 |
0 |
815 |
91 |
|
1 |
UKST-IR |
894 |
2 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
|
4 |
South-SR |
118 |
110 |
0 |
110 |
93 |
|
2 |
South-QV |
94 |
94 |
0 |
94 |
100 |
|
2 |
·
G1. POSS-I E totals include 66
plates processed before 2000 that will be reprocessed.
GSC-II COMPASS DATABASE LOAD (total number entries = 1,089,000,000)
Survey |
Goal |
Previous Month |
Current Month |
Current Total |
% done |
Notes
|
Priority |
POSS-I
E |
880 |
5 |
0 |
5 |
1 |
|
3 |
POSS-QV |
613 |
2 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
|
3 |
POSS-II
J |
897 |
511 |
42 |
553 |
62 |
|
1 |
POSS-II
F |
897 |
743 |
41 |
784 |
87 |
|
1 |
POSS-II
N |
897 |
4 |
0 |
4 |
0 |
|
4 |
SERC-J |
894 |
128 |
3 |
131 |
15 |
|
1 |
South-F |
894 |
473 |
22 |
495 |
55 |
|
1 |
UKST-IR |
894 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
4 |
South-SR |
109 |
13 |
1 |
14 |
13 |
|
2 |
South-QV |
94 |
57 |
10 |
67 |
71 |
|
2 |
GSC-II Dataset for V2.1.n delivery (1791
Fields, 3438 plates) (P1)
Item |
Count |
% done |
Notes |
Plates available |
3417 |
99 |
|
Plates
processed |
3355 |
98 |
|
DB
Load |
1907 |
55 |
|
Current
Calibration or Recalibration |
1887 |
55 |
|
Fields, minus the 72 southern equatorial fields,
with 1644 plates.
GSPC-II OBSERVATIONS
Survey |
Goal |
Previous Month |
Current Month |
Current Total |
% done |
Notes
|
Priority |
POSS-I |
584 |
559 |
0 |
559 |
96 |
P1 |
1 |
POSS-II |
314 |
169 |
0 |
169 |
54 |
|
1 |
SERC |
894 |
868 |
0 |
868 |
97 |
|
1 |
GSPC-II REDUCTIONS
Survey |
Goal |
Previous Month |
Current Month |
Current Total |
% done |
Notes
|
Priority |
POSS-I |
584 |
559 |
0 |
559 |
99 |
P1 |
1 |
POSS-II |
314 |
169 |
0 |
169 |
54 |
|
1 |
SERC |
894 |
868 |
0 |
868 |
97 |
|
1 |