CASB Report for September, 2000

Highlights for Division Meeting

· Resumed COMPASS load; 374 new plates loaded.

Community Affairs and Communications

· García is visiting ESO headquarters and giving a talk about GSC2 photometry.

· Garcia will spend a week working with the OATo staff on GSPC2 PSF photometric analysis and CIQA.

· Continued review of the CASB WWW pages.

· Obtained domain name for hosting IAU working group on sky surveys (skysurveys.org)

· Completed corrections to the GSC 1.2 paper suggested by the referee. Plan to send the final version of the GSC 1.2 paper to the AJ at the end of the month.

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

· Continued planning for the 6^th annual GSC-II meeting, scheduled for Oct 19-20 2000.

· Installed Apache web server on NT for testing/evaluation.

· Supported meetings and budget estimates for SDSS-PA.

· Submitted proposals to NASA AISRP.

· McLean attended Project Management workshop.

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

· Reviewed six Guide Star Problem Reports (GSPRs) this period. Of these problems, five were fine lock failures due to close binaries. The search radius was exceeded for the sixth, which appears to be a misclassified faint galaxy. A Bad GS Alert was filed for each GS.

· Reviewed recent GS acquisition failures for observations of Canopus (Alpha Car). Determined that the magnitudes of guide stars from the Black Birch astrograph plate are progressively fainter at faint magnitudes compared to stars in common with GSC-II entries. Also, brighter GSs have been acquired successfully in other Canopus observations. SPSS plans to use only the latter GSs in future observations.

· Continuing work and consultations with Jesse Doggett on the Bright Object tool for the Visual Target Tuner (VTT).

· Morrison presented the status of finding suitable targets and associated guide stars, using the Tycho II Catalog, for the Nexus mission at GSFC.

· Continued project to refine the Nexus target/guide stars pairs using the GSC II database.

· Participated in writing the NGST Operations Concept and in supplying information on a suitable guide star catalog for NGST (a combination of 2MASS and GSC II).

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

· Completed scanning the latest shipment of UKST-IR plates.

· Rescanned several POSSI-E plates needed to complete GSC-II processing of the survey.

· Resumed scanning POSSII-N plates.

· Returned UKST-IR shipment to ROE; received a small additional shipment of POSSII-N plates.

· Sent five requested plate scans to Cal Tech. Four were remakes of unreadable data tapes due to the age of the tapes.

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

· GAMMA1 continued to perform nominally during the previous month.

· GAMMA2 is temporarily out of service. A failure of critical components resulted in an excess current detected in the servo box. A circuit breaker tripped due to the excess current, shutting down the scanning program. Replaced the failed parts and made mechanical adjustments.

· Completed a subsequent scan, but post scan diagnostics showed unacceptable shearing. The shearing is unrelated to the original failure and is believed to be due to problems in component assembly during the mechanical work.

Data Compression/CD Production

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

Archive Maintenance

· Resolved issues with two of the three remaining scan MODs with known problems.

· Continued writing MODs of UKST-IR scans.

· Began setting up the 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

· Completed recalibration of 397 scans originally processed at ESO.

COMPASS Database

· Extended the production COMPASS plate load daemon to incorporate Object Matching. We are loading and matching approximately 20 plates per day.

· A COMPASS backup plan was developed for sectioning North and South in conjunction with production database operations. A DLT tape stacker has been installed for DB backup automation. This will reduce the 1+ week backup time to a few days with minimal tape handling.

· Developed and tested the version of Plate and Reference Catalog Matching for the COMPASS Object Index utilizing the HTM. The initial performance analysis shows that this method feasibly provides a very fast cross-correlation between large data sets. Tolerance settings are being explored to achieve acceptable match quality.

· Successfully installed the JAVA ShowSky utility on a Linux system and also delivered it to SDSS Science Archive collaborators. This utility is also currently being used for QA of classification algorithms. An interface to remote SDSS test data has also been developed and will be scheduled for implementation and testing.

· Repair to corrupted database regions is underway. There are 3 HTM level 6 DB region files with corrupted Object Index containers. These regions have been restored from previous versions. The plates loaded in these regions will require re-matching.

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

· Did more work on fine-tuning the astrometric filtering algorithm.

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

· Created a versatile version of the classifier without hard-coded classifications, which makes use of the FITS format decision tree file reported the last month. Preliminary results with adding galaxies and blends as classifications appear promising, but clearly more work is needed.

· An experimental training set and associated decision tree has been created, using catalog objects for stars and galaxies, and parent objects for blends. It extends only to 17.5 magnitude (F band, OOP magnitude) due to limitations in the catalogs used. Preliminary results of un-deblended objects in the corresponding magnitude range show a majority of correct results for objects that changed classifications. Analysis of these results continues, as do efforts to further extend the training set.

· Reviewed the convert_ranks program and began a redesign of the rank tables into a FITS format that will be more amenable to experimenting with different sets of features.

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

· Built a new GSPC-II export catalogue, using the criteria presented in the paper and adding observation times and magnitude errors for the case of multiple data.

· Submitted proposals for additional observing time at JKT-La Palma and CTIO.

CALIBRATIONS: Apply_Calibs:

GSC-II General Software Development

GSC-II Science

· Continued working on proper motion science projects; trying to find an accurate solution for the black-hole N23203203594 proper motion.

· Submitted proposal for follow-up observations of high-proper motion stars.

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		847	10	857	96	S4	1
AAO-SES	606		606	0	606	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		515	46	561	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	0	177	19		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	291	48	339	38		3
AAO SES	606	572	0	572	94		1
PPARC ER	288	245	0	245	85		1
UKST-IR	894	28	72	100	11		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	278	11	289	32		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	325	182	507	57		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	0	917	94		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	815	13	828	9358		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	880	5	0	5	1		3
POSS-QV	613	2	0	2	0		3
POSS-II J	897	553	136	689	77		1
POSS-II F	897	784	10	794	89		1
POSS-II N	897	4	22	26	3		4
SERC-J	894	131	170	301	34		1
South-F	894	495	23	518	58		1
UKST-IR	894	0	2	2	0		4
South-SR	109	14	1	15	14		2
South-QV	94	67	10	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	1907	55
Current Calibration or Recalibration	1887	55

• 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.