ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for May 2008

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.1 Characterize and model radiation damage in ACIS CCDs

  ...  Finalized work on a paper presenting the results of the 
radiation damage/reverse annealing tests done at GSFC in 2005.
Will be presented at upcoming SPIE meeting in June.

  ...  Executed new SI modes which allow more grades to be 
telmetered.  These SI modes are being used to compare TE and CC 
mode grade rejection to help calibrate CC mode.  Five ObsIDs
(57834, 57820, 57811, 57802, 57786) in May.

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)

  ...  Finalized work on a paper comparing performance evolution
in Suzaku and ACIS CCDs for upcoming SPIE meeting.

  ...  Examined CC mode data to investigate grade ratio oddities.
Confirmed serial CTI continues to be unmeasurable in both TE and CC modes.

  ...  Advised PSU on updated their CTI corrector with time and
temperature-dependence.  Resources not available for further
improvements.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.
ACIS continues to function nominally with no unexplained trending of  
engineering parameters.

2.3 Instrument science performance

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

  ...  Continued close monitoring of ACIS focal plane temperatures.

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Reported
on improvement in focal plane temperature control since turning off
the Detector Housing heaters.

  ...  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

  ...  Provided information on Chandra/ACIS particle background for
Con-X team member.

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

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Represented ACIS instrument team at IACHEC (International 
Astronomical Consortium for High Energy Calibration) meeting.

  ...  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.  Final student presentations at "Astronomy
in the City" (C. Grant)


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