CASB Report for August, 2000

 

Highlights for Division Meeting

·         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.

 

Community Affairs and Communications

·         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.

 

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

·         Continued planning for the 6th annual GSC-II meeting, scheduled for Oct 19-20 2000.

 

 

 

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

·         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.

 

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

·         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.

 

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

·         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.

 

Data Compression/CD Production

·         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.

 

Archive Maintenance

·         Rewrote all but three of the scan MODs with known problems.  Investigating problems with the last three.

·         Continued writing MODs of UKST-IR scans.

 

Software Development

·         No progress reported in investigation of a GETIMAGE failure with the DSS-I, first reported by the NAOJ Astronomical Data Analysis Center.

 

GSC-II

 

Plate Processing 

·         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...).

 

COMPASS Database

·         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.

 

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

 

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

·         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.

 

 

CALIBRATIONS: Apply_Calibs:

 

GSC-II General Software Development

 

GSC-II Science   

·         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.

 

 


 

Appendix – CASB Statistical Summary

 

SCANNING                                                                                                                                                                         

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

 

 

 

 

COMPRESSION

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


 

 

 

MO DISK ARCHIVING

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