CASB Report February, 2001

Highlights for Division Meeting

· Completed compressing the Equatorial Red (PPARC-ER) plates scans, the final DSS-II red images that needed to be compressed. We now have all sky-coverage in both the red and blue bandpasses.

Community Affairs and Communications

· Supported two tours of CASB.

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

· McLean and Greene continued supporting SDSS planning activities.

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

· Reviewed one Guide Star Problem Report (GSPR) this period. This case was a search failure because the GS was a misclassified galaxy. Filed a Bad GS Alert.

· Released the Bright Object Tool in the VTT. This was in a special release of the VTT only for PI's who are doing STIS MAMA imaging. Until GSC-II is ready for release we will only be supporting STIS MAMA imaging.

· Now working on a version for the Instrument Scientists to perform bright object checking on Phase II proposals that come in for Cycle 10. The release date for that is currently March 22nd. Work for this release is going well.

NGST Development Studies

· Morrison is participating in the NGST proposal writing.

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

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

· Resumed scanning POSS-I O plates.

· Sent a shipment of 60 POSS-II N plates to ESO for copying.

· Returned the current shipment of UKST-IR plates to ROE.

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

· Both scanning machines are performing within specifications, but both are showing some signs that they may require maintenance in the near term.

Data Compression/CD Production

· Completed compressing the Equatorial Red (PPARC-ER) plates scans, the final DSS-II red images that needed to be compressed. We now have all sky-coverage in the red.

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

Archive Maintenance

· Waiting for new larger hard disks to be included in the raid arrays to help mitigate database storage needs, while allowing for the full migration of the the DSS to Chart.

· Remastered 10 CDROMs from the DSS for the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

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 and COMPASS Database

· In a very productive month, ran 228 plates (from both hemispheres) through the plate matching routine. Many of these required database loading as well, and a number represented problem plates encountered in attempting to complete the northern hemisphere.

· After completion of the load and match on the POSSII J and F plates, 19 remained unmatched. Identified and fixed problems with most of these. The fix required deleting and re-loading all the plates in the level 6 HTM region associated with the problem plate as well as deleting some individual corrupted objects. As a consequence a number of good plates as well as the problem plates needed to be deleted, reloaded, and rematched. Six plates remain unmatched in the north.

· Still investigating the exact failure mechanism, but it is probably related to the extreme number of detections in these fields. They represent the six most crowded regions in the north. An attempt to reprocess one of these fields using a higher detection threshold was unsuccessful. A call has also been placed to Objectivity regarding the possibility that we have encountered some sort of hard limit to storage in these failing regions.

· Several database regions in the south required restoring from the last backup when matching tasks revealed they were missing. Why the regions were missing is unclear, but dates point to the Objectivity administrative task of database file compression Ootidy.

· The files were restored and production has been running very smoothly in the south; fewer than 50 plates are required to complete loading.

CALIBRATIONS: General

· Plates with incorrect plate centers were corrected in both the production database and the test database. The CIQA procedure that discovered the problem now indicates the plate centers are correct on these plates.

· Continuing to run CIQA on plates in the test database.

· Began summary analyses of CIQA results for all plates run so far. Overlapping plate residuals in position and magnitude were studied for same-color pairs. Outlier values are quite high in some cases, but this is understandable since the test database contains our worst calibration cases. No systematic differences were observed between northern and southern hemisphere surveys.

· Developed an interactive utility to translate survey field to plate id, and vice versa, using the PSI database, to facilitate working with the database. A batch mode for the utility is also underway.

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

· Conducting a study determining the accuracy of the GSC-2.1 positions, using external catalogs (SPM,NMP, and 2MASS)

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

· Began experimenting with the use of the training set as a tool for visualization during the tree building process, and feedback during the tree application process.

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

GSC-II Science

Appendix – CASB Statistical Summary

SCANNING

Survey		Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-II J	897		902	0	902	100	S4	1
POSS-II F	897		910	0	910	100	S4	1
POSS-II N	897		880	0	880	98	S4	1
AAO-SES	606		614	0	614	100	S4	1
PPARC-ER	288		288	0	288	100		1
AAO-SR	118		118	0	118	100	S2	-
UKST-SR	112		50	0	50	45	S5	3
UKST-IR	894		611	41	652	73		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		190	29	219	23		3
Rescans			33	0	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	474	40	514	57		3
AAO SES	606	606	0	606	100		1
PPARC ER	288	270	18	288	100		1
UKST-IR	894	424	79	503	56		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	432	137	569	48		4
AAO-SES	606	613	0	613	100		3
PPARC-ER	288	250	0	250	87		3
AAO-SR	109	73	0	73	67		4
UKST-IR	894	592	20	612	68		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	931	0	931	99		3
POSS-QV	613	2	0	2	0		3
POSS-II J	897	897	0	897	100		1
POSS-II F	897	897	0	897	100		1
POSS-II N	897	44	0	44	5		4
SERC-J/EJ	894	829	0	829	93		1
South-F	894	855	16	855	96		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	23	0	23	2		3
POSS-QV	613	2	0	2	0		3
POSS-II J	897	897	0	897	100		1
POSS-II F	897	899	0	899	100		1
POSS-II N	897	27	0	27	3		4
SERC-J	894	606	77	683	76		1
South-F	894	670	57	727	81		1
UKST-IR	894	2	0	2	0		4
South-SR	115	38	73	111	97		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	3392	99

• 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.