CASB Report January, 2002

 

Highlights for Division Meeting

·         Completed compressing the selected scans of all POSSII-N plates received from Palomar.

·         Received a special shipment of the last two available POSSII-N plates from Palomar.

 

Community Affairs and Communications

·          Several CASB members attended the 199th AAS Meeting in Washington, January 6-10.

·         R. White and V. Laidler displayed a poster at the January AAS Meeting: "GSC2.2 vs SDSS Astrometry, Photometry, and Classification."

·         D. Carollo, S. T. Hodgkin, A. Spagna, R. L. Smart, M. G. Lattanzi, and B. McLean also displayed a poster at the meeting:  “Discovery of a Dwarf Carbon Star toward the NGP.” They have submitted a paper on this research to A&A.

·         A. Rosenberg and A. Storrs (Towson University) displayed a poster at the meeting: “Mineralogical Mapping of Asteroid 4 Vesta.”

·         Laidler prepared and presented a talk at the AURA Software Workshop: "OCtoo: A Classification Software Package".

·         Greene prepared and presented a talk at the AURA Software Workshop: "Database Technologies for Astronomical Archives".

·         Prepared contributions for the GSC2 multimedia CD project.

·         Updated the GSC2 Calibrations/Comparisons page to include the new SDSS comparison results.

 

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

·         Daniela Carollo of OATo has visited STScI for 20 days to support selection of additional high proper motion objects from the original plate scans and GSC2 processing files to support the search for halo white dwarf candidates.

·         Antonio Volpicelli started comparison of Objectivity and MS SQLserver for GALEX/GSC-II

·         McLean and Greene continued supporting SDSS planning activities.

 

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

·         Reviewed 9 new Guide Star Problem Reports (GSPRs) this period.  Seven of these were fine lock failures.  One of the other GSPRs documented loss of lock during re-acquisitions due to the faintness of the star, possibly a nearby star too faint to be in GSC1.  The remaining GS also was too faint and failed to maintain coarse track.  Filed a Bad GS Alert for each of the GSs.

·         Continuing the port of GetImage to the Windows NT server.  Recently met with David Wolfe to work out some more bugs in the porting process.  These bugs have prevented one from reading data from a CD, a test to verify whether the port is working.  Continuing to correct bugs and hoping to be on schedule for the completion of the data transfer to the raidarray.

·         Continued to obtain statistics of webserver visits, specifically, accessing of GSC2.

·         Occasionally answering questions from the APT team about the Bright Object Tool.

·         Collecting responses about the draft HUGS2 report

 

NGST Development Studies

 

                                      DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

 

Plate Scanning

·         Scanning UKST-IR plates from the current ROE shipment.

·         Returned 44 of the plates from this shipment to ROE, including several high-priority plates that they had requested.

·         Received a special shipment of the last two available POSSII-N plates from Palomar.  Of the two fields covered by these plates, one would have been difficult and the other impossible to observe with the UK Schmidt.

 

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

·         After the power outage of 29 December, some of the devices on pixel1 did not come back on line.  These included two directories containing two completed scans not yet archived. Thomas Walker was able to restart the disks, saving the scans.  Loomis then was able to restart the scanning program and production scanning resumed 11 January.

·         GAMMA2 is still down; performed no production scans on GAMMA2 throughout he period.

·         The low number of production scans this month is due mostly to the above problems.

 

Data Compression/CD Production

·         Completed compressing the selected scans of all POSS-II-N plates received from Palomar (except for the two plates just received).

 

Archive Maintenance

·         Completed migration of all red and blue XDSS CDROMs to the RaidTec NFS raidarray.

·         A total of 766 CDROMs with 475GB of compressed files has been transferred.

·         Started migration of the IR XDSS CDROMs.

·         Loaded the third set of CDROMs (~300) in the carriages in preparation to continue copying.

·         Worked on one archive help desk request for help/information.

·         Continued low-level rationalization of MOD archive.

 

 

GSC-II

 

Plate Processing and COMPASS Database

·         Continued processing POSS Quick V plates.

·         Restarted processing of the POSS-II-N survey.

 

CALIBRATIONS: General

 

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

 
CALIBRATIONS: Classification

 

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

 

GSC-II Science

·          (OATo) Halo White Dwarf Project.  Daniela Carollo is working on the selection and processing of ~ 15 regions toward the NGP in order to cover an area of 400 deg2. The high proper motion objects selected from these fields will increase the sample of halo WD candidates. The spectroscopy follow-up of this sample will be in April at La Palma (Canary Islands). At the moment selections are complete for 13 regions, with the help of Charlie Loomis, and two more regions could be chosen in the next weeks.

·         OATo and CASB staff also report the discovery of a new dwarf carbon  star (GSC2U J131147.2+292348) that has been serendipitously identified during the proper motion survey for cool white dwarfs. Its large proper motion (0.48 as/yr) and its faint apparent magnitude (V~ 18.7) suggest a nearby object of low luminosity. In addition, a low resolution spectrum taken with the William Herschel Telescope clearly shows the strong C2 bands and confirm the dwarf nature of the carbon star. They derive the absolute magnitude limit of M_V >13.5 from its kinematic properties; it appears significantly fainter than the other dC stars for which accurate luminosities have been determined using trigonometric parallaxes (Harris et al. 1998). Finally, the spectrum shows an unexpectedly strong emission below 4700 A This could be an indication of the presence of a bluer secondary component.


 

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

831

17

848

95

         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

418

0

418

45

 

3

Rescans

 

35

0

35

 

 

 

  • S1. Low priority program to rescan crowded fields (|b|<30) originally done with 25 mu scans.  The total number of S scans includes the 2 for the LMC and SMC plus 4 others with |b|>30 performed for research or STIS BOP support.  Another 30 plates have been added to replace those that were repaired before inclusion in DSS-I.
  • S2. This survey is an on-going low level-of-effort collaboration between the STScI and the AAO.
  • S3. Low priority scans of the POSS-I -24 deg and -30 deg zones.
  • S4. Includes recent scans of better grade plates.
  • S5.  Low priority scans of the moderately short exposure R plates from the SERC I/SR Atlas of the Milky Way.
  • S6.  Includes UKST-IR plates from the SERC I/SR Atlas of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds (1978-1985) and the I-Survey of the Southern Sky (1990-xx).

 

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

832

28

860

96

 

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

714

53

767

86

 

3

POSS-I O

936

101

0

101

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

900

0

900

100

 

3

POSS-II N

897

857

14

871

97

 

           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

733

9

742

82

 

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

120

0

120

13

 

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

611

55

57

112

18

 

3

POSS-II J

897

897

0

897

100

 

1

POSS-II F

897

897

0

897

100

 

1

POSS-II N

897

350

0

         350

39

 

4

SERC-J/EJ 

     894

829

0

829

93

 

1

South-F

894

894

0

894

100

 

1

UKST-IR

894

399

1

400

45

 

4

South-SR

116

116

0

116

100

 

2

South-QV

94

94

0

94

100

 

2

POSS-I O

936

17

0

17

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

1

601

100

P1

1

POSS-II

314

271

7

278

88

 

1

SERC

894

905

40

945

100

 

1

  • P1.  The current totals have been revised from earlier ones.