CASB Report for October, 2000

Highlights for Division Meeting

· Submitted the paper, “GSPC2.1: First Release of an All-Sky Set of (B)-V-R Photometric Calibrators for Schmidt surveys,” to Astronomy and Astrophysics.

· A very productive annual GSC-II meeting was held 19-20 October.

Community Affairs and Communications

· Continued review and design of the CASB WWW pages.

· Supported several tours of the plate vault.

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

· McLean and Greene met with the SDSS groups at FNAL and JHU to discuss the SDSS Science Archive. Continuing to pursue a possible partnership with SDSS.

· Met with visitor from GALEX about timetable for definition of science archive.

· Twenty-two persons participated in the 6^th annual GSC-II meeting at Stevensville, MD. Highlights of the meeting included presentations and discussions of the following:

• Project, science, and GSC-II database overviews;
• Plate processing, calibration, and infrastructure;

• Astronomical tasks (astrometry, photometry, and classification);
• Quality control (QA activities, tools, and tests);
• Telescope operations (export GSC-II, NGST and HST support, GEMINI and VLT updates);
• Science activities based on GSC-II.

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

· Reviewed one Guide Star Problem Report (GSPR) this period. The GS, which is in a crowded area in the outer region of the Omega Centauri globular cluster, was fainter than expected. In the DSS-I image it appeared blended and slightly displaced from the GSC-I position. Since this is the third GSPR in this region, recommended that observers use only the special ZZZR catalog for Phase 2. A Bad GS Alert was filed for the GS.

· Completed writing the "engine," where all the calculations are done, of the Bright Object Checker. Currently testing the engine with Jesse Doggett and Ron Downes, who is providing scientific feedback.

· Will soon begin writing the code, with Doggett, behind the Graphical User Interface (GUI) with which the user will run the Bright Object Checker. Have set a mid-January deadline for this GUI.

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

· Completed scanning the last regular shipment of POSSII-N plates.

· Scanned POSSI-O plates until the arrival of another ROE shipment containing UKST-IR plates and plates for the last eight fields the AAO-SES (red) survey.

· Scanned all these SES plates and started scanning the UKST-IR plates.

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

· GAMMA1 continued to perform nominally during the previous month.

· GAMMA2 continues to suffer from higher then acceptable shearing. Some simple mechanical adjustments failed to clear up this problem.

Data Compression/CD Production

· Continued compressing scans of the POSSII-N and UKST-IR surveys.

Archive Maintenance

· Continued writing MODs of UKST-IR scans.

· Disk space problems slowed migration of the DSS1, DQVS, and XDSS compressed files from cd-rom to hard disks on CHART.

Software Development

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

GSC-II

Plate Processing

· Continued with recalibration/load/matching of GSC 2.2 plates (two bandpasses, all sky). Since Oct 1, 2000, 193 new fields have been recalibrated, loaded, and matched, bringing the total number of plates loaded into COMPASS up to roughly 2700.

· Issues concerning disk space and disk fragmentation have resulted in a temporary halt to COMPASS plate loading. Database administrative tasks are being executed to clean up the database disks and should lead to improved efficiency.

· Tested pipeline procedural modifications to improve the efficiency of the processing pipeline. These changes should decrease the turnover time for files in the pipeline processing and should allow an increase in production.

COMPASS Database

· Worked with OATo colleague on resolving remaining problems with CIQA software

· Held “delivery readiness” discussions between OATo staff and the STScI calibrations and database teams.

CALIBRATIONS: General

· The calibrations team has developed a test plan and identified a large common data set to perform quality assurance and characterization of the catalog. Tests include: analyses of DID and GSH header files to look for systematic trends and identify problem plate populations for further study; internal comparisons of objects from overlapping OOP files; and comparisons to a specific set of external catalogs.

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

· Improving the Filter task to further remove local small scale systematic in positions. By studying the residuals between overlapping plates some improvements to the task have been found. However, it appears that the Tycho II catalog may not be dense enough to adequately remove the small-scale systematics. Therefore work has begun on using the SPM catalog.

· Using the residuals from overlapping plates and the results of the CIQA/QA2 plates, discovered the existence of a magnitude dependence. Performing more experiments to quantify the form of this effect.

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

· Collaborated with visiting OATo staff on testing the new decision trees for bright objects reported last month against external catalogs. Test results are quite promising. A plan for further testing has been outlined.

· Collaborated with OATo staff to design algorithms for multi-plate classification voting, and for assigning classification reliabilities, for the GSC2.2 export catalog release. Tests to verify the voting assumptions and to further determine parameters for the reliability have been designed.

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

· Submitted the paper, “GSPC2.1: First Release of an All-Sky Set of (B)-V-R Photometric Calibrators for Schmidt surveys,” to Astronomy and Astrophysics.

· This publication describes the GSPC2 program, data reduction, database organization, and the quality of the photometric sequences.

CALIBRATIONS: Apply_Calibs:

GSC-II Science

· Still investigating the proper motion of the black hole companion XTEJ1118. Making some tests and matching plates that have the same bandpass to evaluate the result.

Appendix – CASB Statistical Summary

SCANNING

Survey		Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897		901	1	902	100	S4	1
POSS-II F	897		910	0	910	100	S4	1
POSS-II N	897		857	16	873	97	S4	1
AAO-SES	606		606	8	614	100	S4	1
PPARC-ER	288		270	0	270	94		1
AAO-SR	118		118	0	118	100	S2	-
UKST-SR	112		50	0	50	45	S5	3
UKST-IR	894		561	6	567	63		2
SERC-J/EJ	447		443	0	443	99	S1	2
POSS-I E	106		106	0	106	100	S3	3
POSS-I O	936		177	12	189	20		3
Rescans			24	9	33

• 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.
• S5. Low priority scans of the moderately-short exposure R plates from the SERC I/SR Atlas of the Milky Way.

COMPRESSION

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897	895	0	897	100		2
POSS-II F	897	897	0	897	100		1
POSS-II N	897	339	20	359	40		3
AAO SES	606	592	0	592	98		1
PPARC ER	288	270	0	270	94		1
UKST-IR	894	100	88	188	21		3

MO DISK ARCHIVING

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897	902	0	902	100		4
POSS-II F	897	878	0	878	98		3
POSS-II N	897	289	76	365	41		4
AAO-SES	606	587	0	587	97		3
PPARC-ER	288	250	0	250	87		3
AAO-SR	109	73	0	73	67		4
UKST-IR	894	507	49	546	61		5
SERC-J/EJ	894	892	0	892	100
SERC-J/REPAIR	48	48	0	48	100
SERC-J/15mu	449	449	0	449	100		5
POSS-I E	933	928	0	928	99		2
POSS-I REPAIR	198	198	0	198	100		2
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	936	917	14	931	99		3
POSS-QV	613	2	0	2	0		3
POSS-II J	897	887	0	887	99		1
POSS-II F	897	897	0	897	100		1
POSS-II N	897	44	0	44	5		4
SERC-J/EJ	894	822	0	822	92		1
South-F	894	828	1	829	93		1
UKST-IR	894	2	0	2	0		4
South-SR	118	110	0	110	93		2
South-QV	94	94	0	94	100		2

GSC-II COMPASS DATABASE LOAD

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I E	936	5	18	23	2		3
POSS-QV	613	2	0	2	0		3
POSS-II J	897	689	27	716	80		1
POSS-II F	897	794	15	809	90		1
POSS-II N	897	26	1	27	3		4
SERC-J	894	301	119	420	47		1
South-F	894	518	87	605	68		1
UKST-IR	894	2	0	2	0		4
South-SR	109	15	0	15	14		2
South-QV	94	77	0	77	82		2

GSC-II Dataset for V2.1.n delivery (1791 Fields, 3438 plates) (P1)

Item	Count	% done	Notes
Plates available	3417	99
Plates processed	3355	98
DB Load	2698	78

• P1. Defined as all 897 POSS-II fields with 1794 plates, plus the 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	559	0	559	96	P1	1
POSS-II	314	169	0	169	54		1
SERC	894	868	0	868	97		1

GSPC-II REDUCTIONS

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I	584	559	0	559	99	P1	1
POSS-II	314	169	0	169	54		1
SERC	894	868	0	868	97		1

• P1. The current totals have been revised from earlier ones.