ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for January 2013

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)

  ...  Completed substantial upgrade to spectral line centroid and
  width monitoring including better binning of eventlists, more robust
  fitting and error treatment and complete coverage of all regions on
  all CCDs.  Went live January 2.  (http://space.mit.edu/~cgrant/line/)

  ...  Continued work on a paper combining CTI, FWHM and background
  monitoring results from ACIS and Suzaku.  Added to and edited text.
  Trying to understand line FWHM (non)evolution on ACIS.


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

  ...  Upgraded Engineering Unit interface computer to a more recent
  one running Solaris.  New Linux-based hardware for the EU interface
  is being configued and tested.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meeting.  Discussion
  included upgrades of the engineering unit and TST machines to Linux,
  and the new ACIS thermal model.

  ...  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.  Waiting for first ACIS triggered shutdown - no radiation
  shutdowns in January.

  ...  Submitted abstract to April HEAD meeting to present a poster on
  the ACIS radiation monitor.

  ...  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 discussions for the next IACHEC
  meeting (spring 2013).  Reviewed proposed program.

  ...  Answered CXC SDS questions regarding future software needs in
  response to hypothetical future spacecraft issues.

  ...  Answered CXC SOT questions about CTI and FWHM evolution for use
  in simulating data for various future CTI levels.

  ...  Answered CXC SDS/DS questions about September 2005 temperature
  anomaly in which the measured temperatures were incorrect.

  ...  Participated in discussions of a proposed tool which would use
  the Au-L line to tweak the gain calibration for specific
  observations.  Primarily useful for high S/N targets with long
  exposures where the uncalibrated very short-term (days-weeks) gain
  fluctuations may be important.

  ...  Answered CXC SDS questions about an observation with anomalous
  biases.

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops ACIS response discussion group.
  Discussed incorporating new high-energy QEU evolution maps into the
  ECS contamination measurement, CC-mode calibration, and improved
  spectral line monitoring.

  ...  Continued to maintain ACIS calibration database of ground and
  flight data products.  Found and fixed some broken links from the
  last time files were moved.


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.  EGSE backup machine has a dead power supply.

  ...  Work continues on upgrading TST machines to Solaris and then
  Linux.  EGSE code being ported to Linux.


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