CASB Report March 2002

 

Highlights for Division Meeting

·         Continued high rates of processing and database loading of plates from the northern and southern infrared surveys.

·         The number of GSC-II objects in the COMPASS database now exceeds one billion!

·         Completed copying all available CDROMs to the CASB RAIDTEC from the jukeboxes.

 

 

Community Affairs and Communications

·         Experienced a glitch in web service this month as the alias used to point to our CASB web site was inadvertently dropped off the DNS tables.  This resulted from some reconfigurations for another machine being removed from our sub net.  Network experts responded quickly and service was down for less then 24 hours.

 

Project Management and Technical Infrastructure

·         CASB welcomes Christopher Hanley who is matrixed from ESS.  Chris is currently assigned to CASB software development and maintenance.

·         Wil O’Mullane is visiting and is enhancing catalog data access.

·         Volpicelli continued comparison of Objectivity and MS SQLserver for GALEX/GSC-II.

·         McLean and Greene continued supporting SDSS planning activities.

 

MISSION SUPPORT

HST Operations

·         Reviewed 2 new Guide Star Problem Reports (GSPRs) this period.  One of these was a fine lock failure. The other was due to a misclassified galaxy.  Filed a Bad GS Alert for each of the GSs.

·         Continued the port of GetImage to the Windows NT server. 

·         Continued to obtain statistics of webserver visits, specifically, accessing of GSC2.

·         Occasionally answering questions from the APT team about the Bright Object Tool.

·         Analyzing responses to the draft HUGS2 report.

 

NGST Development Studies

·         Reviewing draft CSA FGS concept design

 

                                      DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY

 

Plate Scanning

·         Continued scanning the POSS-I O survey on GAMMA1.

 

GAMMA Microdensitometer Systems

·         The PIXEL 1 disk array was replaced.  The new disk array is comprised of excess equipment from the OPUS system, provides larger disks for better access, and greatly simplifies the maintenance of this system. The array is similar to the one installed on PIXEL2 a couple of months ago.

·         Scanning has resumed on GAMMA1 after two scan failures due to hardware problems.  The offending part was replaced and preliminary analysis of a production scan shows nominal results.

·         GAMMA2 is still down; performed no production scans on GAMMA2 throughout the period.

 

Data Compression/CD Production

·         Completed copying all available XDSS CDROM's to the CASB RAIDTEC from the jukeboxes.

·         A total of 1278 CDROMs with 830 GB of compressed files has been transferred.

·         Worked on one archive help desk request for help/information.

·         Continued low-level rationalization of MOD archive.

 

 

GSC-II

 

Plate Processing and COMPASS Database

·         Continued to concentrate effort on production processing, and database ingest of the infrared plate material.  This effort is going well and only a few minor glitches have occurred as a result of some process improvements reported last month.

·         A dump of the database object index shows that the GSC2 catalog has grown to over one billion objects!   The object index now contains 1,005,277,972 unique objects.  The database has grown in size on the order of 200 GB during the past month.

·         Installed Objectivity 7.0 and rebuilt some database application software. Experienced no problems with the database upgrade and incurred very little downtime.

·         Wil O’Mullane is providing enhanced access to catalogs, including:

o        Making some COMPASS data available on the web using Java Server Pages (JSP).

o        Also using JSP, provided NVO access to the GSC1, GSC221, TYC, and HIP catalogues. This is in line with the specifications for the first NVO simple system.

o        Enhanced ShowSky to plot plate boundaries.

 

CALIBRATIONS: Astrometry

 
CALIBRATIONS: Classification

·         In support of the GOODS project, analyzed the GSC2.2.1 data in the GOODS fields (HDF-N extended and CDF-S). These fields are among the most heavily studied in the sky. Unfortunately, both the northern and southern fields lie in overlap regions, and thus contain objects from four plates (two red, two blue). The investigation is still underway, but preliminary results include the identification of a satellite trail in the southern field.

·         Preliminary testing with a database access tool that returns data for all plate objects associated with a GSC2 object id was also performed on these fields. This revealed an object with peculiarities: it contained pointers to several objects from the same plate and it contained pointers to plate objects with positions that differed by half a degree.

·         This finding suggests that a simple quality assurance test should be run over every object in the catalog. Each object should be tested for multiple matches to the same plate (which should be illegal except in the case of blends), and the maximum position separation should be calculated, i.e., sqrt[(max_ra - min_ra)^2 + (max_dec - min_dec)^2]. Statistics from this test should be collected, and objects with illegal matches, or with a position scatter greater than a few arcseconds, should be printed out for further examination.

 

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

·         (OATo) Assembled a new version of GSPC2. This version incorporates all the observations made last year, resulting in more than 100 new GSPC2 fields. All the frames have been matched and names have been assigned to about 770,000 entries. There are still 88,008 entries with no name.

 

GSC-II Science

·         (OATo) Galactic structure.  The large scale distribution of the blue and red object counts has been analyzed along intermediate and high galactic latitudes and compared against a standard axisymmetric galactic model to search for systematic differences that can derive from plate-based calibration errors as well as from non uniform interstellar extinction and non axisymmetric galactic structures. In particular, compared star counts towards the North Galactic Pole against those toward the South Galactic Pole by means of K dwarf tracers in order to measure the Sun displacement from the galactic plane.

·         A PHD student at the Turin University, Paola Re Fiorentin, who will study the dynamics of the Galaxy with GSC2, has joined the OATo group. Started a new collaboration on GSC2/GSPC2 galactic studies with astronomers from the Padova Observatory and University.

·         High proper motion objects.  The submitted paper regarding the discovered faint and fast moving carbon rich object is under revision taking into account the referee's comments. CCD observations in the UBVRI filters have been carried out with the 1.0m JKT in La Palma. This object was not detected by 2MASS, new near IR photometry has been attempted with the 60'' at Palomar, but observers were not able to identify the target.

·         The plate processing and the selection of WD candidates is in progress in order to refine the target list for the next spectroscopic follow-up which is scheduled in mid April with the 3.5m TNG at the Canarias Islands. Submitted a new proposal for optical and NIR spectroscopy with TNG in the next semester.

 

 

 

Appendix – CASB Statistical Summary

 

 

 

GSC-II RETRIEVALS for last 4 months

 

Dec 2001:                     169721 
Jan 2002:                     444834 
Feb 2002:                     290727

Mar 2002:                     124465

 

 

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

882

0

882

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

862

0

862

96

         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

428

10

438

47

 

3

Rescans

 

35

0

35

 

 

 

 

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

872

0

872

97

 

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

784

56

840

94

 

3

POSS-I O

936

101

0

101

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

900

0

900

100

 

3

POSS-II N

897

875

0

875

98

 

           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

787

53

840

94

 

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

120

0

120

13

 

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

611

254

0

254

42

 

3

POSS-II J

897

897

0

897

100

 

1

POSS-II F

897

897

0

897

100

 

1

POSS-II N

897

504

205

         709

79

 

4

SERC-J/EJ 

     894

829

0

829

93

 

1

South-F

894

894

0

894

100

 

1

UKST-IR

894

406

122

528

59

 

4

South-SR

116

116

0

116

100

 

2

South-QV

94

94

0

94

100

 

2

POSS-I O

936

17

0

17

2

 

5

 

 

GSC-II COMPASS DATABASE LOAD (no.objects = 1,005,277,972)

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

41

619

660

74

 

4

SERC-J

894

709

0

709

79

 

1

South-F

894

742

0

742

83

 

1

UKST-IR

894

74

335

409

46

 

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

282

0

282

90

 

1

SERC

894

1017

0

1017

100

 

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

282

0

282

90

 

1

SERC

894

1017

0

1017

100

 

1