CASB Report July, 2001

 

Highlights for Division Meeting

·         Provided a copy of the full unpublished GSC 2.2.1 (998,402,801 objects) to the XMM X-ray Mission for use in testing and evaluation for possible integration into XMM Mission operations.

·         Completed an updated version of the GSC 2.2.01 export catalog with a 4% increase in size

 (455,851,237 entries) from the initial release.  Obtained 100% all sky coverage in two bandpasses with this release and corrected some plate processing issues.

 

Community Affairs and Communications

·         McLean attended the SPIE meeting on Astronomical Data Analysis where NVO issues were discussed.

·         Laidler attended the Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy III conference, and presented a poster on “Canaries in the Data Mine”, incorporating the latest results from the classification work with imprinting.

·         Hosted several tours of the plate vault and scanning facility including tours for the annual STScI family day.

 

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

·         McLean and Greene continued supporting SDSS planning activities.

·         Laidler and McLean worked with SSG management to produce a transition plan for Laidler’s upcoming transfer to SSG that will permit her ongoing participation in the GSC2 project and classification research even after her transition is complete.  We thank SSG management for their flexibility in this matter.

·         Also working with SSG to retain Wolfe part-time to assist with COMPASS DB management after he transfers.

 

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

·         Reviewed two Guide Star Problem Reports (GSPRs) this period.  Both GSPRs were fine lock failures.  Filed a Bad GS Alert for each of the GSs.

·         With Matt Lallo, continued investigating HOPRs 542 and 699, failures to find an Orion target.   

·         Rusty Whitman, while testing the Visual Target Tuner (VTT), correctly identified a GSC-I entry as the position of Barnard’s Star (10” annual proper motion) in 1982.5, the epoch of the associated plate.  Filed a Bad GS Alert for this star to prevent possible GS selection.

·         Work is continuing on the Bright Object Tool in the VTT with the next release scheduled in the December timeframe.

 

NGST Development Studies

·          

 

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

·         Returned the last shipment of UKST-IR plates to ROE.  At the end of the month received a shipment of 100 plates of the SERC-IR Milky Atlas, c. 1980. This survey, plus the later SERC-IR survey, constitutes the southern plate material for the IR band of the GSC-II.

·         Continued scanning POSSI-O plates between shipments from ROE.

 

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

·         Gamma 1 continues to perform well. 

·         Checked several components of GAMMA2 but found no solutions to bring GAMMA2 back into production.

 

Data Compression/CD Production

·         Continued compressing scans of the POSSII-N survey.

·         Completed compressing scans of the AAO Short-Red survey.

·         Started compressing scans of the POSSI-O survey.

 

Archive Maintenance

·         Developing a plan for porting the GetImage software, used to get a DSS image given a set of coordinates, from VMS to NT.  Starting to write up requirements and an implementation plan to complete the project.

·         Worked on four archive help desk requests for help/information.

·         Continued low-level rationalization of MOD archive.

 

GSC-II

 

Plate Processing and COMPASS Database

·         Completed a new version of the GSC2 Export catalog (GSC 2.2.01).  This version contains about a 4% increase in the catalog size (455,851,237 total entries) as well as fixing many of the bugs contained in the first release.  Obtained complete 100% all sky coverage in two bandpasses with this release.  Plates still remain with potential matching problems, but all plates have now been loaded and run successfully through the matching routine.  Simple statistics have been compiled over this export catalog showing improvement over the previous release.

·         Completed a new version of the full (no magnitude selection) export catalog. This version, GSC 2.2.1, is not yet publicly available. The new uncut version contains nearly one billion entries; full statistics have yet to be compiled.

·         Provided a tape copy of the full GSC2.2.1 to the XMM X-ray Mission for use in testing and evaluation for possible integration into XMM Mission operations.

·         Using object density maps kindly provided by OATo, investigated catalog problem areas that escaped a simple statistical analysis.  A few problems have emerged which affect a small percentage of the data.  A sample of the problems shows areas where matching was performed twice (resulting in two entries for one object) and areas where photometric and/or astrometric calibrations may not match surrounding plates correctly.

·         Developed some simple visualization tools to help in the evaluation of areas on the sky where possible calibration problems exist. These will show up unambiguously along the plate boundaries.

·         Continued to receive a considerable number of data requests through our web page query.

·         Continued to investigate user inquiries regarding the GSC2 data set. Several small problems affecting export fields for several plates have been corrected as a result of user inquires.

·         Continued to maintain a web page containing known bugs and limitations of the GSC2.2, and announced the release of the “patch version” GSC2.2.01 on the web page.

·         Continued processing POSSII-N and UKST-IR plates.

 

CALIBRATIONS: General

 

 

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

·         Working on understanding the systematic errors in GSC 2 positions, which are a function of magnitude and distance from the center of the plate. Using the SPM to quantify the effect.

 

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

·         Continued modifications to VERCLASS, the versatile classification task presently in development. Significant milestones this month include the ability to read and manage several families of decision trees with noncongruent sets of features and classes; to apply them to each object selectively or in combination based on their application criteria; and to report the final statistics to the DID file. This completes the removal of the previously hardcoded restrictions on features, classes, and trees. VERCLASS can now be used to classify a plate using separate decision trees for bright and faint objects (with some tunable overlap), resulting in output classes of [star, galaxy, blend] for bright objects, and [star, nonstar, defect] for faint objects.

·         Additional software activities with VERCLASS include implementing the use of the imprinting technique to disqualify votes from less reliable decision trees in determining the final classification. Experiments comparing the results of disqualified voting from all-tree voting indicate that the change in voting procedure changes the final classification in ~1-3% of the objects; that the results can change even if only one of the five trees is disqualified; and that the changed classifications are correct in 60-75% of the examined cases. This is extremely promising.

 

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

·         From the first two La Palma runs in 2001, obtained 42 POSS-II, 16 POSS-I, and one SERC sequences for GSPC-II under photometric conditions.

 

GSC-II Science 


 

Appendix – CASB Statistical Summary

 

SCANNING                                                                                                                                                                         

Survey

Goal

Previous Month

Current Month

Current Total

%

done

Notes

Priority

POSS-II J

897

902

0

902

   100 

         S4

1

POSS-II F

897

910

0

910

100

         S4

1

POSS-II N

897

880

0

880

98

         S4

1

AAO-SES

606

614

0

614

100

         S4

1

PPARC-ER

288

288

0

288

100

 

1

AAO-SR

118

118

0

118

100

S2

-

UKST-SR

112

50

0

50

45

S5

3

UKST-IR

894

697

0

697

78

         S6

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

319

35

354

38

 

3

Rescans

 

34

0

34

 

 

 

 

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

645

36

681

76

 

3

AAO SES

606

606

0

606

100

 

1

PPARC ER

288

288

0

288

100

 

1

AAO-SR

118

118

0

118

100

 

3

UKST-IR

894

674

23

697

78

 

3

POSS-I O

936

0

20

20

2

 

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

900

0

900

100

 

3

POSS-II N

897

823

10

833

93

 

           4

AAO-SES

606

613

0

613

100

 

3

PPARC-ER

288

288

0

288

100

 

3

AAO-SR

109

116

0

116

100

 

4

UKST-IR

894

658

39

697

78

 

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-I O

936

0

20

20

2

 

5

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

931

0

931

99

 

3

POSS-QV

613

2

0

2

0

 

3

POSS-II J

897

897

0

897

100

 

1

POSS-II F

897

897

0

897

100

 

1

POSS-II N

897

151

36

187

21

 

4

SERC-J/EJ 

     894

829

0

829

93

 

1

South-F

894

894

0

894

100

 

1

UKST-IR

894

109

55

164

18

 

4

South-SR

116

116

0

116

100

 

2

South-QV

94

94

0

94

100

 

2

 

 

GSC-II COMPASS DATABASE LOAD (no.objects = 998,402,801)

Survey

Goal

Previous Month

Current Month

Current Total

% done

Notes

Priority

POSS-I E

936

23

0

23

2

 

3

POSS-QV

613

2

0

2

0

 

3

POSS-II J

897

897

0

897

100

 

1

POSS-II F

897

899

0

899

100

 

1

POSS-II N

897

27

0

27

3

 

4

SERC-J

894

709

0

709

79

 

1

South-F

894

742

0

742

83

 

1

UKST-IR

894

2

0

2

0

 

4

South-SR

116

116

0

116

100

 

2

South-QV

94

90

0

90

96

 

2

 


 

 

 

 

GSC-II Dataset for V2.2.n delivery (1791 Fields, 3438 plates)   (P1)

Item

Count

% done

Notes

Plates available

3438

100

 

Plates processed

3438

100

 

DB Load

3438

100

 

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

561

10

571

98

P1

1

POSS-II

314

171

42

213

68

 

1

SERC

894

868

16

884

99

 

1

 

GSPC-II REDUCTIONS

Survey

Goal

Previous Month

Current Month

Current Total

% done

Notes

Priority

POSS-I

584

563

8

571

98

P1

1

POSS-II

314

175

0

175

56

 

1

SERC

894

884

17

901

100

 

1