ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for November 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.  Work on paper stalled because of other short-term priorities, 
but still a high priority in the long-term queue.

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)

  ...  Recalibrated CTI-background correction used in monitoring and
incorporated into standard monitoring.  New correction does a much
better job of removing the CTI jumps associated with jumps in the
particle background.

  ...  Collected new raw frames and updated monitoring web page.
(http://space.mit.edu/~fergason/acis/raw.html)  All seems nominal.

  ...  Examining further how shorter exposure times (< 5 ksec), yield
biased CTI measurements.  Ongoing.  Checking other monitored quantities
for biases as well.

  ...  Checked for any performance changes before and after the recent
Crab observations (which were taken without dither).  None seen.

  ...  Started work on a paper combining CTI and background monitoring
results from ACIS and Suzaku.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance. 
All ACIS engineering parameters continue to operate within predicted
limits.

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.  Developed
an ACIS software patch to monitor threshold crossing rates and notify
the OBC when they go over a trigger level.  Patch is being tested on 
the ACIS Engineering Unit.

  ...  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 planning telecon for upcoming meeting of
IACHEC (International Consortium for High Energy Calibration).

  ...  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