CASB Report for February, 2000

Highlights for Division Meeting

· Scan production has increased to better than 20 scans per week.

Community Affairs and Communications

· McLean attended NVO meeting in Tucson

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

· Consulting agreement with Wil O'Mullane was issued for continued development of JAVA user interface to the GSC-2 export catalogue and COMPASS.

· Fabrizia Guglielmetti has completed her training in plate scanning and is contributing to this task on a routine basis.

· Tonnia Lewis has left STScI for a position with AT&T.

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

· Received two new GSPRs (Guide Star Problem Reports) this period. These GSPRs document Fine Lock Walk Down failures. Bad GS Alerts were filed for three GSPRs, including one from the last period.

· Continued to work on the requirements of the BOP GUI, which will be available for STIS, ACS and COS, in cycle 10. Began working with Tony Krueger in the ESS Division to develop the Visual Target Tuner, a component of the Astronomer's Proposal Tool, which will be used in writing HST programs. The VTT code may also be used in the BOP GUI.

NGST Guiding Studies

· Planning visit of Alessandro Spagna to STScI during April to continue consulting work on this activity.

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

· Completed scanning the 7^th shipment of UKST-IR plates. Resumed scanning the POSSI-O plates.

· With four operators now available and both GAMMAs functioning successfully, scanned 82 plates this period, a current rate of better than 20 scans per week.

· Returned two shipments of UKST-IR plates to ROE; just received the 8^th shipment of these plates.

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

· GAMMA1 has shown some indication of a slight deterioration in mechanical performance, which would indicate that maintenance would be needed. The performance is still within acceptable limits.

· A photometric test performed on GAMMA1 shows good photometric performance with respect to the POSSI-O plates currently being scanned.

Data Compression/CD Production

· Awaiting the receipt, scanning, and compressing of the final J plate from Palomar before the last four J plates can be archived. Meanwhile, compression of POSSII-N plates continues.

Archive Maintenance

· Recycled the remaining miscellaneous nine-track archive tapes and reorganized some of the 9-mm tapes to provide more office space in N112c.

Software Development

· No progress reported in investigation of a GETIMAGE failure with the DSS-I, first reported by the NAOJ Astronomical Data Analysis Center.

· Discussed possibility of putting entire DSS onto hard disk instead of DVD. Costs are now comparable and would simplify maintenance efforts.

GSC-II

Plate Processing

· Fewer than twenty plates in COMPASS remain to be recalibrated.

· Tests of the apply calibrations task and a loading script to transfer recalibrated header files to the NT side were both successful. Larger scale testing is planned for the first week of March. An automated processing script will be constructed to interface with the Apply_Calib task.

· Applying the photometric recalibrations to COMPASS data should begin in production shortly. It is hoped that recalibration of the sparse, high latitude regions can be completed in a few weeks. The crowded regions could extend this time significantly, but lack of experience in these regions precludes an accurate estimate of the time needed.

· A small number of POSSI-E plates have been processed recently. Testing and process optimization continues at a reduced pace. Full scale processing should begin within the next month.

COMPASS Database

· Production Object-Matching has completed approximately 1200 plates and is continuing to run on remaining loaded plates. Load operations are on hold until all plates currently in COMPASS are matched and have the latest calibrations applied.

· Several software database utilities were developed and implemented for QA and production operations for COMPASS catalog production. A Users Guide for these utilities was initiated and kept online with the utilities. These utilities include plate container object counts, finding preloaded plates database regions (for hardware configuration control), COMPASS plate status (listing, loaded, matched, stage of calibration).

· Patches to the recent Objectivity version 5.2 upgrade will be put in place to correct memory leaks in the database kernel.

· Apply_Calib production on COMPASS has been synchronized with the Object-Matching with the addition of lock waiting in all production tasks that are not MROW (Many Readers One Writer) and require write access/updates to the database.

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

· The TYCHO-2 Catalog was received and installed into the pipeline operations catalog area. This will become the default astrometric catalog as soon as testing of the delivery is complete.

· Made a few bug fixes to the task Apply_Calib. A switch was put in Apply_Calib so that if no astrometric mask exists then it will not apply one, instead of aborting.

· The star count package now accesses the database, calculating the observed star counts and also determining the theoretical star counts by the Mendez, van Altena method.

· More revisions were made to the GSC 1.2 paper. In addition a few statistical programs were written to provide figures and tables to show the improvement with GSC 1.2.

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

· Conducted a literature search on classification features, techniques, and results being produced by other sky survey groups.

· Prepared documentation and conducted training sessions in hand classifying objects for training sets.

CALIBRATIONS: Photometry (GSPC-II and DSS-I and -II)

· OATo staff re-reduced one full night from ESO run#3, for which a large part of the data was originally missing. This allowed recovery of fields S002, S146, and S185 that did not have any other observations.

· Processing nights 3,4, and 6 from ESO run #5. There was a problem related to the fact that the fits files contained neither the telescope coordinates nor the sidereal time of the observation. OATo staff successfully recreated the fits headers, and now can run the pipeline reduction software.

· Acquired one night of GSPC-II observations at the JKT telescope of La Palma (February 13, observer Maureen van den Berg). The raw data is in house.

· Processing images from the last KPNO run corresponding to the equatorial field X850, observed to resolve the vignetting correction. Two bands (V,R) were successfully observed and 21 square degrees have been already calibrated; with V magnitude from ~10 to ~20 mag. Due to the large format images, reduction of these data would have been impossible without the upgraded processor and software.

· The analysis of the 137 equatorial fields selected for public release is proceeding. A complete assessment should be finished soon, together with a series of clean sequences to be exported.

GSC-II General Software Development

· With OATo staff, identified a minor bug in the object detection and deblending software. The bugfix will be included in the next software delivery.

GSC-II Science

· Arranging visit of Daniela Carollo from OATo during the month of April to begin work on a systematic search for halo White Dwarf candidates. We plan on using this to prototype similar techniques for mining the GSC-II database.

Appendix – CASB Statistical Summary

SCANNING

Survey		Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897		898	0	898	100		-
POSS-II F	897		907	0	907	100	S4	-
POSS-II N	897		787	0	787	88		1
AAO-SES	606		602	4	606	100	S4	-
PPARC-ER	288		252	18	270	94		1
AAO-SR	118		118	0	118	100	S2	-
UKST-IR	894		285	59	344	39		2
SERC-J/EJ	447		443	0	443	99	S1	2
POSS-I E	106		106	0	106	100	S3	-
POSS-I O	880		30	23	53	6		3
Rescans			18	0	18

• S1. Low priority program to rescan crowded fields (|b|<30) originally done with 25 mu scans. The total number of S scans includes the 2 for the LMC and SMC plus 4 others with |b|>30 performed for research or STIS BOP support. Another 30 plates have been added to replace those that were repaired before inclusion in DSS-I.
• S2. This survey is an on-going low level-of-effort collaboration between the STScI and the AAO. About 25-50 plates have been added in each of the past few years.
• S3. Low priority scans of the POSS-I -24 deg and -30 deg zones.
• S4. Includes recent scans of better grade plates.

COMPRESSION

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897	893	0	893	99		2
POSS-II F	897	877	0	877	98		1
POSS-II N	897	56	36	92	10		3
AAO SES	606	572	0	572	94		1
PPARC ER	288	245	0	245	85		1
UKST-IR	894	0	0	0	0		3

MO DISK ARCHIVING

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897	902	0	902	100		-
POSS-II F	897	878	0	878	98		1
POSS-II N	897	66	60	126	14		3
AAO-SES	606	576	0	576	95		1
PPARC-ER	288	239	11	250	87		1
AAO-SR	109	0	0	73	67		2
UKST-IR	894	0	0	1	0		3
SERC-J/EJ	894	892	0	892	100		-
SERC-J/REPAIR	48	48	0	48	100		-
POSS-I E	933	928	0	928	99		2
POSS-I REPAIR	198	198	0	198	100		-
POSS-QV	613	613	0	613	100		-
SERC-QV	94	94	0	94	100		-
GPO/BB	88	88	0	88	100		-

GSC-II PLATE PROCESSING

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I E	880	66	0	66	2		3
POSS-QV	613	0	0	0	0		3
POSS-II J	897	887	0	887	99	G1	1
POSS-II F	897	897	0	897	100		-
POSS-II N	897	41	0	41	5		4
SERC-J/EJ	894	822	0	822	92		1
South-F	894	815	0	815	91		1
UKST-IR	894	2	0	2	0		4
South-SR	118	110	0	110	93		2
South-QV	94	94	0	94	100		-

• G1. Plate processing is nearly complete. Efforts are now concentrated on recalibration and database load.

GSC-II COMPASS DATABASE LOAD (total number entries = 969,703,754)

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I E	880	0	5	5	0		3
POSS-QV	613	0	0	0	0		3
POSS-II J	897	441	69	510	49		1
POSS-II F	897	728	15	743	81		1
POSS-II N	897	0	3	3	0		4
SERC-J	894	123	5	128	14		1
South-F	894	461	12	473	51		1
UKST-IR	894	0	0	0	0		4
South-SR	109	13	0	13	12		2
South-QV	94	13	44	57	14		2

GSC-II Dataset for V2.1.1 delivery (1791 Fields, 3438 plates) (P1)

Item	Count	% done	Notes
Plates available	3417	99
Plates processed	3355	98
DB Load	1907	55
Current Calibration or Recalibration	1887	55

• P1. Defined as all 897 POSS fields with 1794 plates plus 894 southern fields minus the 72 southern equatorial fields with 1644 plates.

GSPC-II OBSERVATIONS

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I	584	578	0	578	99		1
POSS-II	295	144	0	144	49		1
SERC	894	873	0	873	98		1

GSPC-II REDUCTIONS

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I	584	578	0	578	99	P1	1
POSS-II	295	144	0	144	49		1
SERC	894	873	0	873	98		1

• P1. The current total has decreased because these numbers reflect re-processed data.