ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for March 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.

  ...  Prepared slides on ACIS status for upcoming Chandra Quarterly
  Review.


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 work optimizing the parameters for the TXINGS patch.
  Built new command to update the txings parameters with the optimal
  values.  Will be presented to FDB in April.

  ...  Attended FOT FSW meeting to coordinate the OBC's response to
  ACIS radiation triggers.

  ...  Participated in radiation working group telecon.  Presented
  ACIS threshold crossings data from recent radiation shutdowns.

  ...  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

  ...  Attended IACHEC meeting (International Astronomical Consortium
  for High Energy Calibration).  Chaired working group on CCD issues
  and presented some ACIS CCD topics.

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

  ...  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.



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