ROSAT Status Report #79

Dec 23rd 1993

ROSAT NEWS No. 24 --- 23-Dec-1993

ROSAT Scientific Data Center at the
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE)
Postfach 1603, D-85740 Garching, Germany

e-mail addresses (Uli Zimmermann):

rosat_svc@mpe-garching.mpg.de (Internet) or MPE::ROSAT_SVC (SPAN)

ROSAT Service Area (including ROSAT Data Archive):

ftp rosat_svc.mpe-garching.mpg.de user: anonymous

WWW address: http://www.mpe.mpg.de/xray/wave/rosat/mission/rosat/

XUV Center: 29382::GXUVDC or GXUVDC@AIT.PHYSIK.UNI-TUEBINGEN.DE

WFC Archive access via telnet/ftp ait.physik.uni-tuebingen.de user: xuv (password: xuv_archive)

ROSAT is now three and a half years in orbit and the quality of the X-ray images has not degraded since the 'first light' pointing on the LMC. In addition to the enormous database produced in the All-sky Survey, ROSAT took data from 3897 pointings (up to December 3, 1993) on individual objects. From a total of 34 012 672 sec time on target 14 % were taken with the HRI and 86 % with the PSPC in focus. Data processed and archived at the Data Center at MPE amount to about 500 GBytes.

SATELLITE AND INSTRUMENT STATUS

On November 17 ROSAT went into safemode because of a permanent Z-gyro failure. On November 26 timeline operations were resumed with a modified observing program, constructed under the boundary conditions that slews occur only on the day side and no observations be carried out with a sun cone angle between 85 and 95 degrees. This program worked successfully until December 18 when ROSAT entered safemode again. During the following days different attempts to recover from the safemode were only partially successful and never for more than one orbit. On December 22, the wobble was disabled. Since then ROSAT appears to function orderly. If the situation continues to be stable it is planned to switch to the nominal HRI timeline on December 24. The reasons for the frequent safemode occurrences and whether they are really linked to the operation of the wobble mode are presently not understood and under intense study by GSOC. First checks indicate that the HRI, which was not operated for about half a year, behaves nominally.

MISSION PLANNING

The list master_obs.list in the ROSAT Service Area has been updated and contains now all ROSAT observations performed and processed at MPE until December 3, 1993. In addition the present HRI timeline and a summary timeline can be found there.

EXSAS/MIDAS

The new MIDAS 93NOV release has been received at MPE on December 13. In the meantime we have tested the updated EXSAS 94JAN version in this environment for the UNIX based systems DEC ULTRIX, SUN and HP. We will immediately ship this version of EXSAS to the institutes that have already replied to our EXSAS Questionnaire sent last week to all the institutes presently on our distribution list. The DEC VMS version is expected to be ready for distribution at the begin of January. The OSF version of MIDAS (for the DEC ALPHA processors) looks good and can hopefully also be released on the January timescale.

Select another report Return to the ROSAT GOF Curator: Michael Arida (ADNET); arida@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov
HEASARC Guest Observer Facility

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