ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for February 2012

1.  ACIS Characterization

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 work on a paper combining CTI, FWHM and background
  monitoring results from ACIS and Suzaku.  Continued writing text for
  A&A paper.

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


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance. A
  review of the past 60 days of operations shows no deleterious trends
  in the engineering parameters. 

  ...  Prepared an ACIS team assessment of the risk to the instrument
  from repeated temperature cycling during perigee passages.  Risk is
  small but not zero.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Topics
  included the TXINGS patch, possible future Moon observations and
  thermal issues.

  ...  Continued work optimizing the parameters for the TXINGS patch.
  A draft memo has been circulated with a recommendation for optimal
  parameters and a path for determining new optimal parameters as the
  solar environment changes.  

  ...  Participated in radiation working group telecon.  Presented
  ACIS threshold crossings data from recent radiation shutdowns
  including one which triggered the TXINGS patch.

  ...  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).

  ...  In response to a user query, reviewed our experience with previous ACIS
  observations of the Moon in 2001, and the arguments that were made
  against additional observations in 2004.

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops modeling discussion group.
  Discussed CC mode calibration (nearly finished), contamination
  measurements, and gain issues at low energies on S1.

  ...  Answered CXC SDS question on usage of the acis afterglow tool
  tool on ECS observations.

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

  ...  Removed bad memory from ACIS monitoring computer.

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.



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