ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for November 2007

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.1 Characterize and model radiation damage in ACIS CCDs

  ...  Continued work on a paper presenting the results of the 
radiation damage/reverse annealing tests done at GSFC in 2005.

  ...  Executed new SI modes which allow more grades to be 
telmetered.  These SI modes will be used to compare TE and CC 
mode grade rejection to help calibrate CC mode.  Four ObsIDs 
(58144, 58133, 58125, 58110) in November.

  ...  Gave a talk at Nuclear Science Symposium 2007, "X-ray
CCD with Low Noise Charge Injection Structure", which describes
updated and new results related to studying radiation damage in
CCDs.

1.3 Monitor scientific on-orbit performance of ACIS

  ...  Continued monitoring of ACIS CTI, gain, trailing pixel 
pulseheight, detector efficiency, corner pixel distribution, 
and spectral line centroid and width.  Updated monitoring web 
pages.  (http://space.mit.edu/~cgrant/monitor.html)

  ...  Presented ACIS SI team report at the Chandra Quarterly 
Review.  

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.
The ACIS instrument continues to perform nominally.  A review of 
the last 60 days of on-orbit engineering data reveals no unexpected 
results.

  ... Three Detector Housing cooling tests were conducted in November.
Two are part of a series done during CDF-S observations.  The third
was done during a perigee passage.  Results were consistent with
thermal models.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ... Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Discussed
detector housing cooling tests and other thermal issues.

  ...  Reviewed documents, CAPs and data related to Detector Housing 
cooling tests.

  ...  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).

  ...  Reviewed and commented on Cycle 10 Proposers' Observatory Guide

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops modeling discussion group.

  ...  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.

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


Outreach:

Mentor to high school students participating in the Chandra 
Astrophysics Institute (C. Grant)


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