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