ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for December 2008

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.1 Characterize and model radiation damage in ACIS CCDs

  ...  Continued work on irradiation/annealing tests done at GSFC
in 2005.  Retrieving additional raw data from tape.  

  ...  Worked to finalize and document temperature-dependent CTI
correction algorithm for future inclusion in the CXC contributed
software listing.

1.3 Monitor scientific on-orbit performance of ACIS

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

  ...  Resumed collecting occasional raw data frames.  Raw frames can
be helpful with diagnosing future problems and better understanding
cosmic ray artifacts.  Examined new raw frames and posted movies to
the web.  (http://space.mit.edu/~fergason/acis/raw.html)

  ...  Participated in discussion of ACIS contamination calibration
including possible systematics in the ECS measurements and results
from calorimeter measurements of a sibling radioactive source.

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance. 
ACIS continues to operate in nominal fashion.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Continued investigation of ObsID 9209 anomaly (BEP crash during
CC mode run soon after loading flight software patch version 44).  
Drafted report on the additional testing of flight s/w version 44
and presented to FDB.

2.3 Instrument science performance

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

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Discussed
testing of flight software version 44.

  ...  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

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops modeling discussion group.  Discussed
updates to contamination calibration and adding CTI correction software
to the CXC contributed page.

  ...  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