ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for December 2005

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.3 Monitor scientific on-orbit performance of ACIS

  ...  Continued monitoring of ACIS CTI, gain, trailing pixel pulseheight,
detector efficiency and spectral line centroid and width.  CTI analysis
improved to reduce statistical errors.  Fixed error in low energy efficiency 
analysis Updated monitoring web pages.  
(http://space.mit.edu/~cgrant/monitor.html)

  ...  Continued work on memo for the operations team on the consequences
of a future, unprotected radiation belt transit by ACIS.  Motivated
by recent Chandra safe mode simulation. 


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance. The 
ACIS instrument continues to operate nominally.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Supported Ops discussion of changes to SACGS (SOT/ACIS Command
Generation Software) to utilize new and better calibrated energy-to-ADU
conversions.  Currently using a single gain value for the entire focal
plane.  New paradigm would take into account gain variations between
CCDs, particularly important for BI vs FI CCDs, and gain changes since
launch.

  ...  Continued daily quick-look processing of ACIS telemetry and 
maintained Web interface to ACIS real-time data.

  ...  Continued to publish the "annotated DOT" timeline reports.


3.  CXC Support

3.1 Provide user support

  ...  Updated ACIS memo listing calibration ObsIDs and observation
characteristics (ACIS Memo #165).

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Working with CXC SDS to validate acis_process_events implementation
of serial CTI correction.  

  ...  Working with CXC Cal on CTI correction calibration.  Transfered
code that calculates serial charge loss maps for future BI CCD calibration.
Began validating initial CXC produced S3 CTI calibration products.

  ...  Began testing S3 CTI correction algorithm on simulated data. 

  ...  Discussed dead area due to cosmic rays and whether the residual
charge in bias maps can be used to measure the spatial gradient with CXC
SDS.

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops modelling discussion group.
Updated group on progress with S3 CTI correction implementation.  Discussed
future calibration priorities.

  ...  Continued to maintain ACIS calibration database of ground and 
flight data products.


4.  OCC Support

4.1 Use of MIT/ACIS EGSE at OCC

  ...  Continued support and maintenance of ACIS EGSE software and 
hardware at the OCC.  Replaced broken monitor.

  ...  Continued work on improving configuration management of the ACIS
workstations in the TST area of the Chandra OCC.  Work nearly complete.


Outreach:

all recent memos available at http://space.mit.edu/ACIS/iacis.html