ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for September 2010

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)

  ...  Continued to recalibrate CTI-sacrificial charge correction
used in monitoring.  Initial testing with an additional correction 
term (linear to quadratic) looks hopeful.

  ...  Presented ACIS status at Chandra Quarterly Review.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance. 
ACIS continues to perform nominally.

  ...  Testing repairs to the LRCTU#2 interface between the SunOS
workstation and the Engineering Unit's DPA.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Continued 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.  Further
testing of RADMON algorithms on archival ACIS data.

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussed
modeling of ACIS temperatures, using ACIS as a radiation monitor,
and CTI monitoring update.

  ...  Participated in radiation working group telecon.

  ...  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, CC-mode 
calibration and the status of contamination calibration.

  ...  Provided references to ACIS work by the ACIS team on how 
measurements of sub-pixel structure informed the ACIS CCD model
(which is being used to inform a sub-pixel event positioning
algorithm underdevelopment by CXC).

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

  ...  Reviewed ACIS chapter of the Chandra Proposers Observatory Guide.

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