ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for November 2009

1.  ACIS Characterization

1.1 Characterize and model radiation damage in ACIS CCDs

  ...  Continued work on irradiation/annealing tests done at GSFC
in 2005.  Writing up as a paper.

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)

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

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

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Testing of flight software standard patch release D revealed
issues which caused premature termination of some science runs.  Patch
release E fixes the problems with release D and is currently under
review and being tested.  This version includes two new standard patches, 
badpix and buscrash2, which address software problem reports 141 and 142.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Began investigation into whether ACIS can act as it's own
radiation monitor.  Prompted by action from the thermal working group
which is concerned about the continued degradation of EPHIN.  Reviewed
ACIS software capabilities, began collecting and examining ObsIDs which 
were taken in high radiation environments.

  ...  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
status of temperature-dependent CTI correction software (testing), CC-
mode calibration and status of graded-mode CTI correction (being worked
on by DS!)

  ...  Gave comments on proposed new CC-mode grade filter which better
matches the filter used by TE mode and telemeters grades useful for
CTI correction.  Grade filter is now standard in all CC-mode parameter
blocks.

  ...  Reviewed POG ACIS chapter and new CXC ACIS calibration web pages.

  ...  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.


Outreach:

none this month

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