Page 1 PROGRESS REPORT THE SOLAR-A SOFT X-RAY TELESCOPE (SXT) PROGRAM (CONTRACT NAS8-37334) (for the month of September, 1992) OVERVIEW The SOLAR-A Mission is a program of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), the Japanese agency for scientific space activity. The SOLAR-A satellite was launched on August 30, 1991 from Kagoshima Space Center (KSC) in Japan, and renamed Yohkoh. The purpose of this mission is to study high energy phenomena in solar flares. Under an international cooperative agreement, Lockheed, under NASA contract, is providing a scientific investigation using the Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT), one of the primary experiments of the mission. The SXT was developed by Lockheed in cooperation with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, and the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Tokyo. MAJOR ACTIVITIES IN THE MONTH << Solar Activity and Observation Planning >> There are large amounts of quality science that are being stimulated by the new data from Yohkoh, the Nobeyma Radioheliograph and the various ground based observatories involved in this cooperative program. In particular, new results reported by Yoshimori and Kawabata on observations of the 15-November-91 flare by the Yohkoh Gamma Ray Spectrometer were extremely interesting. By comparing the time profile of the positron annihilation line at 511 keV and the prompt nuclear gamma ray lines at 4-7 MeV they are able to conclude for the largest gamma ray burst at 2238 UT that the high energy protons are mirroring quite high up where the density is about 10^13. SXT undertook to support the cooperative observing campaign "PHOTOSPHERIC AND CHROMOSPHERIC STUDIES OF SOLAR ACTIVITY AND FLARES" which was organized by Roberto Falciani and took place on 25-Sept to 7-Oct-92. Unfortunately, the sun was very quiet during this period so that the primary objectives of the observing were not achieved. In order to try to get better observations of the kind of small events that are prevalent now we have changed the Partial Frame sequence to observe a small (2.6'x2.6') field of view with a time resolution of 8 seconds and with an ARS1 pointing update every minute. This is a completely new observing philosophy as heretofore we updated pointing at most once per orbit and in the ARS2 mode forced the SXT PFI to follow the same active region. Although the region does dance around quite a lot it does appear that these data will be of value in studying transient brightenings in active regions with better time resolution than before. Page 2 SXT also ran a FFI table concentrating on long quarter resolution images through all filters in support of coronal green, red, and yellow line observations from Norikura Coronagraph Station. The scientific objective here is to determine better emission measure models of coronal structures by combining the Norikura and SXT data. << Data Analysis Software >> There was a BCS software development meeting held in England between 30-Sep and 2-Oct which was attended by M.Morrison and J.Lemen from the SXT team. It is the desire of the SXT and BCS team to have a common database format for all of the processed Yohkoh data which is similar to the raw reformatted data. It is also important to maintain a common "look and feel" for the software where possible. The current BCS analysis software is written in Fortran-77 and it will be re-written in IDL over the next few months. A preliminary version of the Yohkoh Software and Database User's Guide has been reviewed by select people. This document should be released to the whole Yohkoh community by the end of October. << Instrument Operations and Health >> SXT continues to function with no problems. There will be an operational impact in late October to mid November when ISAS reconfigures their mainframe computers. The mainframes will not be available for Yohkoh operations between 30-Oct (Fri) to 3-Nov (Tue) 18-Nov (Wed) to 21-Nov (Sat) No SXT table loads, command generation, or real time monitoring of the telemetry can occur. The operators at KSC will be able to monitor the health, but nobody at ISAS. << Data Flow >> There were some problems with accessing data for week 92_36 (30-Aug to 5-Sep) which has caused the reformatting and distribution to fall a few weeks behind. That problem has been fixed and catchup should only take a few days. The shutdown of the mainframes in Oct and Nov will cause some additional delays in the distribution of Yohkoh data. << Problems >> The aspect telescope continues to lose transmission. It is currently 13% of original. Page 3 << Papers and Conferences >> SXT contributions to SOHO workshop and COSPAR meeting: Keith Strong presented the SXT video at the First SOHO Workshop held in Annapolis, MD from 26 - 29 August 1992. It was the subject of much interest and debate. SXT data will obviously be a vital planning tool for the SOHO mission, and there was considerable excitement among the SOHO investigators at the possibility that Yohkoh might still be functioning when SOHO is launched and would be able to support the mission with types of data that will be unavailable on SOHO. There were several presentations of the SXT data at the recent COSPAR meeting held in the Washington DC convention center from 29 August to 5 September 1992. In the "Structure and Physical Properties of the Quiet Corona" Symposium organized by Alan Gabriel, Keith Strong presented an invited talk entitled "Coronal Observations From the SXT on Yohkoh" which attracted a host of questions from interested foreign investigators who had not seen the SXT data before. During the 5-day Colloquium entitled "Fundamental Problems in Solar Activity" organised by Monique Pick and Marcos Machado, Prof. Uchida and Prof L. Culhane presented invited talks that featured SXT data. Prof. Uchida's talk featured an extended SXT video which nearly caused a riot from the audience when the unfortunate chairman suggested there might not be time to show it! Karen Harvey and Keith Strong also presented a contributed paper on X-ray bright point lifetime distributions during this symposium. The SCIENCE paper and cover illustration have at last been accepted for publication in the the 23 October issue which is devoted to Science in Japan. The issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan which include the 30 initial papers will also be published in October as volume 43. On 30 September and 1 and 2 October an informal workshop was held at NAOJ-Mitaka on the subject. "ONE YEAR OF YOHKOH RESEARCH -What have we learned from the YOHKOH observation? What should (can) we do from now?" << Personnel Travel >> The SXT staffing at ISAS for September, 1992 was: ACTON 24-SEP-92 30-SEP-92 * 7 (total of 7 days) FREELAND 1-SEP-92 * 24-SEP-92 24 (total of 24 days) HUDSON 18-SEP-92 30-SEP-92 * 13 (total of 13 days) LEMEN 1-SEP-92 * 24-SEP-92 24 (total of 24 days) NITTA 1-SEP-92 * 14-SEP-92 14 (total of 14 days) MARTENS 1-SEP-92 * 30-SEP-92 * 30 (total of 30 days) WUELSER 9-SEP-92 30-SEP-92 * 22 (total of 22 days) Page 4 The planned SXT staffing at ISAS for October, 1992 is: ACTON 1-OCT-92 * 23-OCT-92 23 (total of 23 days) FREELAND 5-OCT-92 31-OCT-92 27 (total of 27 days) HUDSON 1-OCT-92 * 4-OCT-92 4 7-OCT-92 31-OCT-92 * 25 (total of 29 days) NITTA 6-OCT-92 31-OCT-92 * 26 (total of 26 days) MARTENS 1-OCT-92 * 31-OCT-92 * 31 (total of 31 days) SLATER 7-OCT-92 31-OCT-92 * 25 (total of 25 days) WUELSER 1-OCT-92 * 5-OCT-92 5 (total of 5 days) NOTE: The "*" signifies travel that started before or ended after the date shown. << Plans for October 1992 >> *. Complete and distribute the first version of the Yohkoh Software and Database User's Guide. *. Consolidate the multiple version of software available to calculate temperatures from SXT images. *. Prepare for the 15-Nov-91 flare workshop which will occur in Hawaii in Nov-92. Respectfully submitted, Mons D. Morrison Frank Friedlaender Page 5 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII ACTIVITY REPORT (DR. R. CANFIELD) No input required for this month -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY No input required for this month -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STANFORD UNIVERSITY (DR. P. STURROCK) No input required for this month -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOLAR PHYSICS RESEARCH CORPORATION (KAREN L. HARVEY) No input required for this month Page 6 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NASA REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE (IN LIEU OF NASA FORM 1626) --------------------|--------------------------|-------------------------------- 1. REPORT NO. | 2. GOVERNMENT | 3. RECIPIENT'S DR-01 | ACCESSION NO. | CATALOG NO. --------------------|--------------------------|-------------------------------- 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE | 5. REPORT DATE Monthly progress report - for the month of | October 10, 1992 September, 1992 |-------------------------------- | 6. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION | CODE: O/91-30 -----------------------------------------------|-------------------------------- 7. AUTHOR(S) | 8. PERFORMING ORGANIZA- M. D. Morrison | TION REPORT NO: F. M. Friedlaender | |-------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------|10. WORK UNIT NO. 9. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME AND ADDRESS | Lockheed Palo Alto Research Labs B/252 |-------------------------------- Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory O/91-30 |11. CONTRACT OR GRANT NO. 3251 Hanover Street, Palo Alto Ca. 94304 | NAS8 - 37334 -----------------------------------------------|-------------------------------- 12. SPONSORING AGENCY NAME AND ADDRESS |13. TYPE OF REPORT AND Marshall Space Flight Center (Explorer Program)| PERIOD COVERED Huntsville Alabama 35812 | Progress report for the month | of Jan, 1992 |-------------------------------- |14. SPONSORING AGENCY | CODE MSFC / AP32 -----------------------------------------------|-------------------------------- 15. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16. ABSTRACT The SOLAR-A Mission is a program of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), the Japanese agency for scientific space activity. The SOLAR-A satellite was launched on August 30, 1991 to study high energy phenomena in solar flares. As an international cooperative agreement, Lockheed, under NASA contract, is providing a scientific investigation and has prepared the Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT), one of the two primary experiments of the mission. --------------------------------------|----------------------------------------- 17. KEY WORDS (SUGGESTED BY | 18. DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT AUTHOR(S)) Solar-A, X-ray, CCD, | Space Science, Solar Physics ------------------------|-------------|----------|-----------------|------------ 19. SECURITY CLASSIF. | 20. SECURITY CLASSIF. | 21. NO OF PAGES |22. PRICE (OF THIS REPORT) | (OF THIS PAGE) | | one | None 6 | ------------------------------------|-----------------|------------ For sale by: Supement Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402-0001 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No. Delivered From Subject Lines 2 Oct 9 17:03 LACTON September, 1992 SXT Monthly Prog 253 <<< END >>> Monday, Oct 12, 1992 12:31 PM PDT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~