ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for July 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 overclock monitoring.  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.  Trying to better quantify the
  systematic errors in fitting Gaussians to intrinsically non-Gaussian
  lines.  Draft is being reviewed by co-authors.

  ...  Assessed whether new parameter blocks being used for regular
  ECS observations that reject fewer grades would also be useful for
  long CTI observations after shutdowns.  Compared relative count
  rates during long observations to the surrounding weeks - little to
  no difference.  New parameter blocks will (eventually) also be used
  for long CTI measurements.


2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

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

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Reviewed CAP to run long duration CTI measurement after
  radiation shutdown.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Topics
  included thermal issues and recent radiation shutdowns.  Discussed
  ACIS team response to anomalies in the case of key personnel being
  unavailable.

  ...  Assessing what aspects of the MIT ACIS team anomaly response are
  currently unique to a particular individual.  Considering
  cross-training and better troubleshooting documention to provide
  better coverage during team member absences.

  ...  Both ACIS and the Chandra OBC are now ready to respond to a
  radiation trigger from the TXINGs patch.  Changing particle
  background will require revisiting the patch parameters a few times
  a year.  Working on how to provide threshold crossing plots and data
  automatically for ground assessment during radiation events.

  ...  Two presentations on the TXINGS patch were given at the SPIE
  Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
  conference by P. Ford and C. Grant.  Proceedings papers submitted.

  ...  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 CC mode calibration (nearly finished), contamination
  measurements, and gain issues at low energies on S1.

  ...  Answered SDS question regarding ACIS temperature measurement,
  CTI temperature dependence and calibration of the
  temperature-dependent CTI correction.

  ...  Provided updated time-dependent CTI fits to the Penn State ACIS
  team to be incorporated into their CCD simulator.

  ...  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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