CASB Report September, 2001

 

Highlights for Division Meeting

·         Essentially finished migration of DSS1 and DQVS from CDROM to online RAID array.  Access to these compressed sky surveys, which support HST Phase2 operations, will soon be more reliable.

 

Community Affairs and Communications

·         Laidler and White submitted a paper for inclusion in the proceedings of the Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy III conference, to be published by Springer-Verlag. The text contains highlights of the poster presented by Laidler at this conference in July.

·         Morrison worked with Smart on an astrometry paper, describing the astrometry calibration method for the GSC II catalog and focusing on the GSC 2.2 release. Also they worked on the reporting the astrometric quality of the GSC 2.2 catalog. This is an on going project.

 

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

·         Continued planning for the 7th annual GSC-II meeting, scheduled during the week of October 22, 2001 at OATo.

·         Wil O’Mullane visited September 17 - 29.  His main objective this time was to integrate SDSS, which is done but may be improved.  His secondary objective was to fix some bugs and make enhancements to ShowSky and ShowFullSky.

·         As of 1 October, Mike Asbury will no longer be working on the APT/VTT Bright Object Tool project.

·         Laidler attended a two-day seminar on Statistical Learning and Data Mining, taught by Hastie and Tibshirani.

·         Moved the scanning test system (PIXEL 0) and the optical bench from the engineering lab to the plate vault.  Some reorganization will be necessary to accommodate the new equipment, but ample room exits.

·         McLean and Greene continued supporting SDSS planning activities.

 

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

·         Reviewed nine Guide Star Problem Reports (GSPRs) this period.  One GSPR was an initial acquisition failure due to a spoiler star too faint to be in GSC-I.  Another was a search failure due to a blended pair of stars misclassified as a brighter, single star in GSC-I.  The other GSPRs were fine lock failures.  Filed a Bad GS Alert for each of the GSs.

·         Completing work on the APT/VTT Bright Object Tool.  The next release will be in December.  All but one OPR is fixed for this release. 

·         Still in the process of laying out plans to port the GetImage software to the Windows NT server.

 

NGST Development Studies

·          

 

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

·         Continued scanning UKST-IR plates.  Nearly 80% of the current shipment has been scanned.

 

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

·         GAMMA1 continues to perform well.

·         No work was performed on Gamma2 during this period.

 

Data Compression/CD Production

·         Continued compressing scans of the POSSII-N survey.

·         Continued compressing scans of the POSSI-O survey.

 

Archive Maintenance

·         Essentially finished migration of DSS1 from CDROM to online RAID arrays. The DSS1 is complete except for CDROM disk 100 and a technical problem. The DQVS is 100% copied.  DSS1 and DQVS support HST Phase2 operations.

·         Beginning the migration of the red XDSS from CDROM.

·         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 all database moves to take advantage of the enhanced disk array in the COMPASS database server.  All 32768 databases were re-registered with the objectivity database and more then half the files required disk-to-disk transfer.  The new database organization insures the maximum efficiency of space available.  A simple counting task was run to sample all the databases and provided confirmation that all the data moves were successfully registered with the objectivity database. Database tasks will resume on a production level in about a week.

·         Have begun to recompile and rebuild the COMPASS database software tasks on an as needed basis.

·         Resumed the task of identifying and planning fixes in regions of sub-optimal export data.  (For example, these regions may include poor photometry for very faint stars or a few multiple entries from overlapping plates that were not matched.) The problems can be due to a number of processing, software and calibration errors.  The sub-optimal data affects a small percentage (order of 1 % or less) of the database and in most cases does not present significant problems for the operational use of the catalog, but could be of minor concern for statistical and scientific use of GSC-II.

 

CALIBRATIONS: General

 

 

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

·         Morrison worked on the magnitude dependence of the GSC II positions and has written a series of programs to quantify this effect. The steps involve comparing the SPM catalog to the GSC II database on a plate-by-plate basis.

·         This approach was taken because the GSC 2.2 export catalog decreases the amplitude of the magnitude dependence due to the method used to pick the positions. This is good for users of the GSC 2.2 catalog, but the effect still exists in the positions and must be removed before accurate proper motions can be determined.

·         Therefore the above set of programs compares positions in the SPM catalog with those from all the GSC II plates that overlap the SPM. The results are binned into a 3-d mask: xi, eta, magnitude space. Also, the results are binned into radial bins and magnitude.

·         These programs have been tested using the TESTFDB and the results look promising except there are not enough plates contained in the TESTFDB for really useful information. This work will be run soon on FDB on COMPASS.

 

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

·         During Smart’s visit from OATo, a more detailed approach for describing the GSC2.2 classification performance was designed for use in the GSC2.2 paper. This Bayesian formulation will permit a sophisticated user to perform a statistical error analysis that accounts for variations in the star/galaxy populations when different samples are studied.

 

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

 

GSC-II Science

·         We have performed extensive analysis of GSC2.2 data by comparing the observed counts of the POSS-II plates located at intermediate and high galactic latitudes (|b|>+25 deg) against the starcounts predicted by the Mendez model extended to the J385 and F610 filters.   These comparisons show a quite good agreement (better towards higher latitudes) and also reveal the presence of fields affected by problems with the photometric calibration and classification.


 

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

733

35

768

86

         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

354

5

359

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

720

28

748

83

 

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

697

0

697

78

 

3

POSS-I O

936

48

46

94

10

 

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

833

0

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

697

0

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

70

30

100

7

 

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

308

0

         308

34

 

4

SERC-J/EJ 

     894

829

0

829

93

 

1

South-F

894

894

0

894

100

 

1

UKST-IR

894

234

158

392

44

 

4

South-SR

116

116

0

116

100

 

2

South-QV

94

94

0

94

100

 

2

POSS-I O

936

0

15

15

2

 

5

 

 

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

 


 

 

 

 

 

GSPC-II OBSERVATIONS

Survey

Goal

Previous Month

Current Month

Current Total

% done

Notes

Priority

POSS-I

584

603

0

603

100

P1

1

POSS-II

314

271

0

271

86

 

1

SERC

894

889

0

889

99

 

1

 

GSPC-II REDUCTIONS

Survey

Goal

Previous Month

Current Month

Current Total

% done

Notes

Priority

POSS-I

584

603

0

603

100

P1

1

POSS-II

314

271

0

271

86

 

1

SERC

894

905

0

905

100

 

1