CASB Report for October, 2000

 

Highlights for Division Meeting

·         Submitted the paper, “GSPC2.1: First Release of an All-Sky Set of (B)-V-R Photometric Calibrators for Schmidt surveys,” to Astronomy and Astrophysics.

·         A very productive annual GSC-II meeting was held 19-20 October.

 

Community Affairs and Communications

·         Continued review and design of the CASB WWW pages.

·         Supported several tours of the plate vault.

 

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

·         McLean and Greene met with the SDSS groups at FNAL and JHU to discuss the SDSS Science Archive. Continuing to pursue a possible partnership with SDSS.

·         Met with visitor from GALEX about timetable for definition of science archive.

·         Twenty-two persons participated in the 6th annual GSC-II meeting at Stevensville, MD. Highlights of the meeting included presentations and discussions of the following:

 

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

·         Reviewed one Guide Star Problem Report (GSPR) this period. The GS, which is in a crowded area in the outer region of the Omega Centauri globular cluster, was fainter than expected. In the DSS-I image it appeared blended and slightly displaced from the GSC-I position.  Since this is the third GSPR in this region, recommended that observers use only the special ZZZR catalog for Phase 2.   A Bad GS Alert was filed for the GS.

·         Completed writing the "engine," where all the calculations are done, of the Bright Object Checker.  Currently testing the engine with Jesse Doggett and Ron Downes, who is providing scientific feedback.

·         Will soon begin writing the code, with Doggett, behind the Graphical User Interface (GUI) with which the user will run the Bright Object Checker.  Have set a mid-January deadline for this GUI.

 

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

·         Completed scanning the last regular shipment of POSSII-N plates.

·         Scanned POSSI-O plates until the arrival of another ROE shipment containing UKST-IR plates and plates for the last eight fields the AAO-SES (red) survey. 

·         Scanned all these SES plates and started scanning the UKST-IR plates.

 

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

·         GAMMA1 continued to perform nominally during the previous month.

·         GAMMA2 continues to suffer from higher then acceptable shearing.  Some simple mechanical adjustments failed to clear up this problem.

 

Data Compression/CD Production

·         Continued compressing scans of the POSSII-N and UKST-IR surveys.

 

Archive Maintenance

·         Continued writing MODs of UKST-IR scans.

·         Disk space problems slowed migration of the DSS1, DQVS, and XDSS compressed files from cd-rom to hard disks on CHART.

 

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 

·         Continued with recalibration/load/matching of GSC 2.2 plates (two bandpasses, all sky).  Since Oct 1, 2000, 193 new fields have been recalibrated, loaded, and matched, bringing the total number of plates loaded into COMPASS up to roughly 2700.

·         Issues concerning disk space and disk fragmentation have resulted in a temporary halt to COMPASS plate loading.  Database administrative tasks are being executed to clean up the database disks and should lead to improved efficiency.

·         Tested pipeline procedural modifications to improve the efficiency of the processing pipeline.  These changes should decrease the turnover time for files in the pipeline processing and should allow an increase in production.

 

COMPASS Database

·         Worked with OATo colleague on resolving remaining problems with CIQA software

·         Held “delivery readiness” discussions between OATo staff and the STScI calibrations and database teams.

 

CALIBRATIONS: General

·         The calibrations team has developed a test plan and identified a large common data set to perform quality assurance and characterization of the catalog. Tests include: analyses of DID and GSH header files to look for systematic trends and identify problem plate populations for further study; internal comparisons of objects from overlapping OOP files; and comparisons to a specific set of external catalogs. 

 

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

·         Improving the Filter task to further remove local small scale systematic in positions. By studying the residuals between overlapping plates some improvements to the task have been found. However, it appears that the Tycho II catalog may not be dense enough to adequately remove the small-scale systematics. Therefore work has begun on using the SPM catalog.

·         Using the residuals from overlapping plates and the results of the CIQA/QA2 plates, discovered the existence of a magnitude dependence. Performing more experiments to quantify the form of this effect.

 

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

·         Collaborated with visiting OATo staff on testing the new decision trees for bright objects reported last month against external catalogs. Test results are quite promising. A plan for further testing has been outlined.

·         Collaborated with OATo staff to design algorithms for multi-plate classification voting, and for assigning classification reliabilities, for the GSC2.2 export catalog release. Tests to verify the voting assumptions and to further determine parameters for the reliability have been designed.

 

CALIBRATIONS: Photometry (GSPC-II and DSS-I and -II)

·         Submitted the paper, “GSPC2.1: First Release of an All-Sky Set of (B)-V-R Photometric Calibrators for Schmidt surveys,” to Astronomy and Astrophysics.

·         This publication describes the GSPC2 program, data reduction, database organization, and the quality of the photometric sequences.

 

CALIBRATIONS: Apply_Calibs:

 

GSC-II Science 

·         Still investigating the proper motion of the black hole companion XTEJ1118. Making some tests and matching plates that have the same bandpass to evaluate the result.

 


 

Appendix – CASB Statistical Summary

 

SCANNING                                                                                                                                                                         

Survey

Goal

Previous Month

Current Month

Current Total

%

done

Notes

Priority

POSS-II J

897

901

1

902

   100 

         S4

1

POSS-II F

897

910

0

910

100

         S4

1

POSS-II N

897

857

16

873

97

         S4

1

AAO-SES

606

606

8

614

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

561

6

567

63

 

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

177

12

189

20

 

3

Rescans

 

24

9

33

 

 

 

 

COMPRESSION

Survey

Goal

Previous Month

Current Month

Current Total

% done

Notes

Priority

POSS-II J

897

895

0

897

100

 

           2

POSS-II F

897

897

0

897

100

 

1

POSS-II N

897

339

20

359

40

 

3

AAO SES

606

592

0

592

98

 

1

PPARC ER

288

270

0

270

94

 

1

UKST-IR

894

100

88

188

21

 

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

289

76

365

41

 

           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

507

49

546

61

 

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

917

14

931

99

 

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

828

1

829

93

 

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

 

 

GSC-II COMPASS DATABASE LOAD

Survey

Goal

Previous Month

Current Month

Current Total

% done

Notes

Priority

POSS-I E

936

5

18

23

2

 

3

POSS-QV

613

2

0

2

0

 

3

POSS-II J

897

689

27

716

80

 

1

POSS-II F

897

794

15

809

90

 

1

POSS-II N

897

26

1

27

3

 

4

SERC-J

894

301

119

420

47

 

1

South-F

894

518

87

605

68

 

1

UKST-IR

894

2

0

2

0

 

4

South-SR

109

15

0

15

14

 

2

South-QV

94

77

0

77

82

 

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

2698

78

 

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