ACIS Instrument Support - Monthly Progress Report for October 2016

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.   Made improvements to spectral line fitting in the low-count rate regime.  Updated the evolution of the temperature dependent CTI correction for BI CCDs. (http://space.mit.edu/~cgrant/monitor.html).

  ...  Updated versions of the ACIS monitoring software "pmon" and "getnrt" running for all the SAO monitoring machines with updated error detection logic.   

  ...  Prepared ACIS presentation for the Chandra Quarterly in November.

2.  Engineering

2.1 Instrument hardware engineering performance

  ...  Continue to monitor long term ACIS instrument performance.  A review of the past 70 days of engineering telmetry shows no unanticipated trends.
  
  ...  The EEPROM checksum was verified in the OCT1016 load.   Will continue to run monthly.  MIT telemetry processing will automatically check the results and send out an alert if the checksum is unexpected.

  ...  Reviewed and suggestion substantial changes to the new DEA-B command procedures.

2.2 Flight software maintenance

  ...  Flight software patch F-G-H (improved buscrash2) uploaded in June 2014.

2.3 Instrument science performance

  ...  Participated in monthly ACIS operations meetings.  Discussed instrument status, DPA component temperatures and bakeout studies.

  ...  Preparing memo on ACIS DPA component temperatures, including pre-flight thermal testing and ACIS team recommendations on future yellow/red limits.  Provided maximum component temperatures seen in ground testing.  (ftp://acis.mit.edu/pub/acis-dpa-temps-v1.1.pdf)

  ...   In response to referee comments, further editing of paper "Annealing bounds to prevent further Charge Transfer Inefficiency increase of the Chandra X-ray CCDs", first author Corentin Monmeyran.  Resubmitted to NIMB.  Accepted in November.

  ...  Contributing to new ACIS quick-look anomaly reference web pages.  Revealed a previously known but undocumented anomaly.

  ...  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

  ...  ACIS memo listing calibration ObsIDs and observation characteristics (ACIS Memo #165) will no longer be updated.  Functionality is replaced by new web page (http://acis.mit.edu/asc/evt-page.html), which provides the same information but is more automated.

3.2 Provide data analysis support

  ...  Participated in CXC Cal/Ops ACIS response discussion group.  Discussed updates to tgain, contamination, and to the temperature-dependent CTI correction.

  ...  Provided ground ECS data to calibration scientist.

  ...  Provided comments on updates to ACIS chapter in the Proposers Observatory Guide.

  ...  Participated in discussions of how to estimate the UV exposure of the ACIS focal plane, important for determining if polymerization of the ACIS contaminant is important.

  ...  Provided input for adding time-evolution to the BI CCD CTI-temperature relationship used by acis_process_events.  Proposed updates released into test CALDB for testing.

  ...  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.  Performed monthly check of all ACIS hardware and software in the TST room at the OCC.

4.2 Generation of commands for ACIS observations

  ...  Continued review and updating of SACGS documentation (SACGS = SOT ACIS Command Generation System).  

  ...  Continuing familiarization with SACGS operation and under-the-hood functioning.  Helped diagnose a chip drop issue due to previously scheduled observation being removed from schedule without undropping the chip.  Helped confirm successful completion of chip drop after unexpected log off.  Worked out interaction between global assignment and the scheduled chip drops.

  ...  Fixed bug in SACGS which prevents assigning an SI mode to an observation with status "untriggered".

  ...  Reviewed OCT1716 post-post-final OR list.  Reviewed OCT151616A command load.  Reviewed OCT2416 Long Term Schedule OR list, preliminary schedule, and final OR list.  Reviewed OCT3116 Long Term Schedule OR list.

  ...  Dropped chips from eight obsids.  Built two new SI modes.  Installed new ACIS tables at the oCC

  ...  Assisted with selection of configuration for fast TOO.

  ...  Checking on automated processes associated with SACGS.