CASB Report September, 2001

Highlights for Division Meeting

· Essentially finished migration of DSS1 and DQVS from CDROM to online RAID array. Access to these compressed sky surveys, which support HST Phase2 operations, will soon be more reliable.

Community Affairs and Communications

· Laidler and White submitted a paper for inclusion in the proceedings of the Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy III conference, to be published by Springer-Verlag. The text contains highlights of the poster presented by Laidler at this conference in July.

· Morrison worked with Smart on an astrometry paper, describing the astrometry calibration method for the GSC II catalog and focusing on the GSC 2.2 release. Also they worked on the reporting the astrometric quality of the GSC 2.2 catalog. This is an on going project.

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

· Continued planning for the 7th annual GSC-II meeting, scheduled during the week of October 22, 2001 at OATo.

· Wil O’Mullane visited September 17 - 29. His main objective this time was to integrate SDSS, which is done but may be improved. His secondary objective was to fix some bugs and make enhancements to ShowSky and ShowFullSky.

· As of 1 October, Mike Asbury will no longer be working on the APT/VTT Bright Object Tool project.

· Laidler attended a two-day seminar on Statistical Learning and Data Mining, taught by Hastie and Tibshirani.

· Moved the scanning test system (PIXEL 0) and the optical bench from the engineering lab to the plate vault. Some reorganization will be necessary to accommodate the new equipment, but ample room exits.

· McLean and Greene continued supporting SDSS planning activities.

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

· Reviewed nine Guide Star Problem Reports (GSPRs) this period. One GSPR was an initial acquisition failure due to a spoiler star too faint to be in GSC-I. Another was a search failure due to a blended pair of stars misclassified as a brighter, single star in GSC-I. The other GSPRs were fine lock failures. Filed a Bad GS Alert for each of the GSs.

· Completing work on the APT/VTT Bright Object Tool. The next release will be in December. All but one OPR is fixed for this release.

· Still in the process of laying out plans to port the GetImage software to the Windows NT server.

NGST Development Studies

·

DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

Plate Scanning

· Continued scanning UKST-IR plates. Nearly 80% of the current shipment has been scanned.

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

· GAMMA1 continues to perform well.

· No work was performed on Gamma2 during this period.

Data Compression/CD Production

· Continued compressing scans of the POSSII-N survey.

· Continued compressing scans of the POSSI-O survey.

Archive Maintenance

· Essentially finished migration of DSS1 from CDROM to online RAID arrays. The DSS1 is complete except for CDROM disk 100 and a technical problem. The DQVS is 100% copied. DSS1 and DQVS support HST Phase2 operations.

· Beginning the migration of the red XDSS from CDROM.

· Worked on four archive help desk requests for help/information.

· Continued low-level rationalization of MOD archive.

GSC-II

Plate Processing and COMPASS Database

· Completed all database moves to take advantage of the enhanced disk array in the COMPASS database server. All 32768 databases were re-registered with the objectivity database and more then half the files required disk-to-disk transfer. The new database organization insures the maximum efficiency of space available. A simple counting task was run to sample all the databases and provided confirmation that all the data moves were successfully registered with the objectivity database. Database tasks will resume on a production level in about a week.

· Have begun to recompile and rebuild the COMPASS database software tasks on an as needed basis.

· Resumed the task of identifying and planning fixes in regions of sub-optimal export data. (For example, these regions may include poor photometry for very faint stars or a few multiple entries from overlapping plates that were not matched.) The problems can be due to a number of processing, software and calibration errors. The sub-optimal data affects a small percentage (order of 1 % or less) of the database and in most cases does not present significant problems for the operational use of the catalog, but could be of minor concern for statistical and scientific use of GSC-II.

CALIBRATIONS: General

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

· Morrison worked on the magnitude dependence of the GSC II positions and has written a series of programs to quantify this effect. The steps involve comparing the SPM catalog to the GSC II database on a plate-by-plate basis.

· This approach was taken because the GSC 2.2 export catalog decreases the amplitude of the magnitude dependence due to the method used to pick the positions. This is good for users of the GSC 2.2 catalog, but the effect still exists in the positions and must be removed before accurate proper motions can be determined.

· Therefore the above set of programs compares positions in the SPM catalog with those from all the GSC II plates that overlap the SPM. The results are binned into a 3-d mask: xi, eta, magnitude space. Also, the results are binned into radial bins and magnitude.

· These programs have been tested using the TESTFDB and the results look promising except there are not enough plates contained in the TESTFDB for really useful information. This work will be run soon on FDB on COMPASS.

CALIBRATIONS: Classification

· During Smart’s visit from OATo, a more detailed approach for describing the GSC2.2 classification performance was designed for use in the GSC2.2 paper. This Bayesian formulation will permit a sophisticated user to perform a statistical error analysis that accounts for variations in the star/galaxy populations when different samples are studied.

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

GSC-II Science

· We have performed extensive analysis of GSC2.2 data by comparing the observed counts of the POSS-II plates located at intermediate and high galactic latitudes (|b|>+25 deg) against the starcounts predicted by the Mendez model extended to the J385 and F610 filters. These comparisons show a quite good agreement (better towards higher latitudes) and also reveal the presence of fields affected by problems with the photometric calibration and classification.

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		733	35	768	86	S6	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		354	5	359	38		3
Rescans			34	0	34

• 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.
• 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.
• S6. Includes UKST-IR plates from the SERC I/SR Atlas of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds (1978-1985) and the I-Survey of the Southern Sky (1990-xx).

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	720	28	748	83		3
AAO SES	606	606	0	606	100		1
PPARC ER	288	288	0	288	100		1
AAO-SR	118	118	0	118	100		3
UKST-IR	894	697	0	697	78		3
POSS-I O	936	48	46	94	10		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	900	0	900	100		3
POSS-II N	897	833	0	833	93		4
AAO-SES	606	613	0	613	100		3
PPARC-ER	288	288	0	288	100		3
AAO-SR	109	116	0	116	100		4
UKST-IR	894	697	0	697	78		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-I O	936	70	30	100	7		5
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	308	0	308	34		4
SERC-J/EJ	894	829	0	829	93		1
South-F	894	894	0	894	100		1
UKST-IR	894	234	158	392	44		4
South-SR	116	116	0	116	100		2
South-QV	94	94	0	94	100		2
POSS-I O	936	0	15	15	2		5

GSC-II COMPASS DATABASE LOAD (no.objects = 998,402,801)

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	709	0	709	79		1
South-F	894	742	0	742	83		1
UKST-IR	894	2	0	2	0		4
South-SR	116	116	0	116	100		2
South-QV	94	90	0	90	96		2

GSPC-II OBSERVATIONS

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I	584	603	0	603	100	P1	1
POSS-II	314	271	0	271	86		1
SERC	894	889	0	889	99		1

GSPC-II REDUCTIONS

Survey	Goal	Previous Month	Current Month	Current Total	% done	Notes	Priority
POSS-I	584	603	0	603	100	P1	1
POSS-II	314	271	0	271	86		1
SERC	894	905	0	905	100		1

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