CASB Report for September, 2000

 

Highlights for Division Meeting

·         Resumed COMPASS load; 374 new plates loaded.

 

Community Affairs and Communications

·         García is visiting ESO headquarters and giving a talk about GSC2 photometry.

·         Garcia will spend a week working with the OATo staff on GSPC2 PSF photometric analysis and CIQA.

·         Continued review of the CASB WWW pages.

·         Obtained domain name for hosting IAU working group on sky surveys (skysurveys.org)

·         Completed corrections to the GSC 1.2 paper suggested by the referee. Plan to send the final version of the GSC 1.2 paper to the AJ at the end of the month.

 

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

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

·         Installed Apache web server on NT for testing/evaluation.

·         Supported meetings and budget estimates for SDSS-PA.

·         Submitted proposals to NASA AISRP.

·         McLean attended Project Management workshop.

 

 

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

·         Reviewed six Guide Star Problem Reports (GSPRs) this period. Of these problems, five were fine lock failures due to close binaries. The search radius was exceeded for the sixth, which appears to be a misclassified faint galaxy.  A Bad GS Alert was filed for each GS.

·         Reviewed recent GS acquisition failures for observations of Canopus (Alpha Car).  Determined that the magnitudes of guide stars from the Black Birch astrograph plate are progressively fainter at faint magnitudes compared to stars in common with GSC-II entries.  Also, brighter GSs have been acquired successfully in other Canopus observations.  SPSS plans to use only the latter GSs in future observations.

·         Continuing work and consultations with Jesse Doggett on the Bright Object tool for the Visual Target Tuner (VTT).

·          Morrison presented the status of finding suitable targets and associated guide stars, using the Tycho II Catalog, for the Nexus mission at GSFC.

·         Continued project to refine the Nexus target/guide stars pairs using the GSC II database.

·         Participated in writing the NGST Operations Concept and in supplying information on a suitable guide star catalog for NGST (a combination of 2MASS and GSC II).

 

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

·         Completed scanning the latest shipment of UKST-IR plates.

·         Rescanned several POSSI-E plates needed to complete GSC-II processing of the survey.

·         Resumed scanning POSSII-N plates.

·         Returned UKST-IR shipment to ROE; received a small additional shipment of POSSII-N plates.

·         Sent five requested plate scans to Cal Tech.  Four were remakes of unreadable data tapes due to the age of the tapes.

 

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

·         GAMMA1 continued to perform nominally during the previous month.

·         GAMMA2 is temporarily out of service.  A failure of critical components resulted in an excess current detected in the servo box.  A circuit breaker tripped due to the excess current, shutting down the scanning program.  Replaced the failed parts and made mechanical adjustments.

·         Completed a subsequent scan, but post scan diagnostics showed unacceptable shearing.  The shearing is unrelated to the original failure and is believed to be due to problems in component assembly during the mechanical work.

 

Data Compression/CD Production

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

 

Archive Maintenance

·         Resolved issues with two of the three remaining scan MODs with known problems.

·         Continued writing MODs of UKST-IR scans.

·         Began setting up the 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 

·         Completed recalibration of 397 scans originally processed at ESO.

 

COMPASS Database

·         Extended the production COMPASS plate load daemon to incorporate Object Matching.  We are loading and matching approximately 20 plates per day.

·         A COMPASS backup plan was developed for sectioning North and South in conjunction with production database operations.  A DLT tape stacker has been installed for DB backup automation.  This will reduce the 1+ week backup time to a few days with minimal tape handling.

·         Developed and tested the version of Plate and Reference Catalog Matching for the COMPASS Object Index utilizing the HTM.  The initial performance analysis shows that this method feasibly provides a very fast cross-correlation between large data sets.  Tolerance settings are being explored to achieve acceptable match quality.

·         Successfully installed the JAVA ShowSky utility on a Linux system and also delivered it to SDSS Science Archive collaborators.  This utility is also currently being used for QA of classification algorithms.  An interface to remote SDSS test data has also been developed and will be scheduled for implementation and testing.

·         Repair to corrupted database regions is underway.  There are 3 HTM level 6 DB region files with corrupted Object Index containers.  These regions have been restored from previous versions.  The plates loaded in these regions will require re-matching. 

 

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

·         Did more work on fine-tuning the astrometric filtering algorithm.

 

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

·         Created a versatile version of the classifier without hard-coded classifications, which makes use of the FITS format decision tree file reported the last month.  Preliminary results with adding galaxies and blends as classifications appear promising, but clearly more work is needed.

·         An experimental training set and associated decision tree has been created, using catalog objects for stars and galaxies, and parent objects for blends. It extends only to 17.5 magnitude (F band, OOP magnitude) due to limitations in the catalogs used. Preliminary results of un-deblended objects in the corresponding magnitude range show a majority of correct results for objects that changed classifications.  Analysis of these results continues, as do efforts to further extend the training set.

·         Reviewed the convert_ranks program and began a redesign of the rank tables into a FITS format that will be more amenable to experimenting with different sets of features.

 

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

·         Built a new GSPC-II export catalogue, using the criteria presented in the paper and adding observation times and magnitude errors for the case of multiple data.

·         Submitted proposals for additional observing time at JKT-La Palma and CTIO.

 

CALIBRATIONS: Apply_Calibs:

 

GSC-II General Software Development

 

GSC-II Science   

·         Continued working on proper motion science projects; trying to find an accurate solution for the black-hole N23203203594 proper motion.

·         Submitted proposal for follow-up observations of high-proper motion stars.

 


 

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

847

10

857

96

         S4

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

515

46

561

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

0

177

19

 

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

291

48

339

38

 

3

AAO SES

606

572

0

572

94

 

1

PPARC ER

288

245

0

245

85

 

1

UKST-IR

894

28

72

100

11

 

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

325

182

507

57

 

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

0

917

94

 

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

13

828

9358

 

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

880

5

0

5

1

 

3

POSS-QV

613

2

0

2

0

 

3

POSS-II J

897

553

136

689

77

 

1

POSS-II F

897

784

10

794

89

 

1

POSS-II N

897

4

22

26

3

 

4

SERC-J

894

131

170

301

34

 

1

South-F

894

495

23

518

58

 

1

UKST-IR

894

0

2

2

0

 

4

South-SR

109

14

1

15

14

 

2

South-QV

94

67

10

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

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