ROSAT Status Report #52:
Mar 1, 1993
There is now a central email address for all ROSAT related queries. Queries should be emailed to
rosat@rosserv.gsfc.nasa.gov
rather than individual members of the ROSAT GOF. From there a duty scientist will take responsibility for replying to the question. Common questions, and their replies, will be logged in the Frequently Asked Questions files on the rosat anonymous ftp account. The FAQ files are currently located under the pub/FAQ directory.
Redistribution of MPE ROSAT Status Report # 16
========================================================================= = = = ROSAT NEWS No. 16 --- 1-Mar-1993 = = = =-----------------------------------------------------------------------= = ROSAT Scientific Data Center at the = = Max-Planck Institut fuer Extraterrestrische Physik = = Giessenbachstrasse, 8046 Garching, FRG = =-----------------------------------------------------------------------= = e-mail address (Uli Zimmermann) SPAN: MPENS::ROSAT_SVC = = Internet: rosat_svc@mpe-garching.mpg.de = = ROSAT Service Area access: ftp rosat_svc.mpe-garching.mpg.de = = user rosat_svc with no(empty) password = =-----------------------------------------------------------------------= = XUV Center: 29382::GXUVDC or GXUVDC@AIT.PHYSIK.UNI-TUEBINGEN.DE = ========================================================================= R O S A T - 1000 days in orbit
On February 24, 1993 ROSAT completed its first 1000 calendar days in orbit. (A few ROSAT experts already celebrated the ROSAT day 1000 - defined by the number of contact cycles with the ground station - on February 10.)
The event was celebrated by a big press conference held at MPE on February 25 under the motto "1001 Nights with ROSAT". In the afternoon a champagne party of the ROSAT group opened our eyes for other aspects of the mission.
In addition the data center organized the production of ROSAT celebration T-shirts (showing a famous image of the ROSAT All-Sky Survey) which were immediately sold out. If there is enough interest in additional T-shirts we will try to have another charge printed. Available models include: T-shirts in ash or white (about DM 20 to 25) and white sweat-shirts (about DM 40 to 50). Available sizes range from small to XXL. Actual prices will depend on the integral number of requests. Requests may be sent to ROSAT_SVC not later than end of March.
NETWORK ACCESS
Within the next few months we will move the ROSAT Service Area from the present location on a VMS computer to a UNIX based machine. To facilitate the transition with a minimum of problems for you we have changed our network addresses to the form described in the header (the old addresses will run out of function in a few weeks). Please note that the SPAN email node is now MPENS instead of MPE and that the ROSAT Service Area soon will be no longer accessible via SPAN (DECnet).
SATELLITE and INSTRUMENT STATUS
As already mentioned in the February issue of the ROSAT News, since 1993, January 10th startracker 1 (STC1) has developed a malfunction which in quite a few cases leads to prolonged search times at the beginning of an observation slot and sometimes completely inhibits the acquisition of a target. In such cases the sensor computer program seems to stop completely until it is restarted by an internal hardware watchdog. The pointed observing time lost this way amounts to about 5 percent (derived from a statistics over ROSAT days 998-1012), however with large scatter.
Attempts by both GSOC and MBB to find systematic signatures across the sensor field-of-view were not successful. In the last week in February an internal selftest of the STC1 memory has been commanded which led to the conclusion that parts of the RAM may have problems. This failure is thus similar to the one that ultimately led to the loss of STC2 in autumn 1990. However, in that case a rapid degradation of the performance over about 2 weeks was observed, while the situation of STC1 seems to be stable since the first occurrence of the malfunction. If the worst comes to the worst we are prepared to switch over and utilize the WFC starcamera, with its telemetry being routed through the central data handling system to the attitude computer. An in-orbit test readiness review meeting for the involved software change will be held on March 3rd at Dornier, Friedrichshafen.
MISSION PLANNING
Here are some statistics on the outcome of the AO-4 proposal round:
Germany US UK proposals req_ksec proposals req_ksec proposals req_ksec total 321 15028 351 23400 121 5777 PSPC 220 8826 207 11700 82 3560 HRI 101 6202 144 11700 39 2210
total number of AO-4 proposals: 793
The requested times have to be compared with the times available for scheduling. For German requests about 3000 ksec are at the most available for the half year period during which each of the 2 instruments is planned to be used.
PROCESSING
A new version of the ROSAT Products Guide (PSPC section) has been printed and will soon be sent out to all PIs.
An error in the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test results (and the light curves) as given in the SASS protocols has been detected that becomes effective for clock times larger than 2**24.Details can be found in the ROSAT Service Area.
There is a bug in the SIMBAD cross-correlation list that becomes apparent if a ROSAT source contains a zero degree, zero arcminute or zero arcsec position field. In those cases the correlations are searched for at wrong positions.
FITS CONVERSION
The HRI FITS conversion postponed due to an error in the attitude dataset will now be continued, although the error could be corrected only partially. The decision was made because this dataset is not usually used in the data analysis and software that will correct the erroneous datasets is planned to be developed.
ROSAT DATA ARCHIVE
Difficulties with the consistency of archive datasets of German and US origin caused in a number of cases delays in the delivery of data to the requesters.
EXSAS
The EXSAS Users Guide and the EXSAS Command Summary are in press and should be ready for shipment in the second week of March.
The newly delivered EXSAS software allows also to work with datasets in US format. Unfortunately the creation of the corresponding EXSAS command has not been included in the delivered command file. This can be easily corrected by adding the following line
create/command intape/usrod @@ EXSAS_PRG:intaqp
in either the system command definition file (XEXSAS:exsas.prg) or the user login.prg (in directory mid_work).
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