Page 1 PROGRESS REPORT THE SOLAR-A SOFT X-RAY TELESCOPE (SXT) PROGRAM (CONTRACT NAS8-00119) (for December 2000) OVERVIEW The YOHKOH Mission is a program of the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) with collaboration by the U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U. K. Science and Engineering Research Council. The YOHKOH satellite was launched on 30 August 1991 from Kagoshima Space Center (KSC) in Japan. The purpose of this mission is to study high energy phenomena in solar flares and the Sun's corona. Under an international cooperative agreement, Lockheed Martin, 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 at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in cooperation with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, and the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Tokyo. MAJOR PROGRAMMATIC ACTIVITIES IN THE MONTH The year ended on a high note with personnel and computing equipment in a good state. The challenge for 2001 will be the Senior Review later in the year. All other aspects of the program are also in a good state. SOLAR ACTIVITY Solar activity was low in early December, after the notable splurge of X-class flares in late November. The GOES background remained around/under the C-level. Only one M-class flare occurred on 6-Dec in NOAA 9246 near the west limb. During week 50, the distinct coronal-hole channel noted in the science nugget http://solar.physics.montana.edu/nuggets/2000/001020/001020.html made its 5th (at least) disk passage and excited much attention from observers. Solar activity remained curiously low during the rest of December as well. The Sun produced only four M flares, but spent appreciable time with the GOES background flux level above C. An M-class flare was reported at NOAA 9267 on 12-Dec. It occurred during Yohkoh daytime, but SXT was undergoing a CCD bakeout. In AR9289 three M-class flares occurred. These were M1.3 at 26-Dec-2000 16:02UT, M4.3 at 27-Dec-2000 15:30UT and M1.2 at 29-Dec-2000 02:10UT. As we went into our long New Year's holiday, of course, a major sunspot group (NOAA 9289, area = 760) made its appearance. Page 2 CAMPAIGNS The MEOC campaign (waves) continued through 8-Dec and SXT supported a CDS campaign (velocity distribution in ARs) by K. Hori from the 4th through the 8th of December. Because of the target selection, we could not get much PFI data for the latter. A Max Millennium target-of-opportunity campaign, "Eruptive Flares Associated with Sigmoids" is in progress. We are on alert for fat sigmoids. SCIENCE It is well-known that CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) correlate with long-duration solar flares. This is important because CMEs play the biggest role in "space weather", i.e. solar disturbances out in our human part of the solar system. We would like to use those long-duration flares as a guide to the occurrence of a CME. A sequence of large, impulsive flares from November, 2000, stand this correlation on its ear. Here we had a whole sequence of quite impulsive flares with strong and precise CME correlations. Nobody can sensibly ever claim again that flares and CMEs are physically distinct! These events were "homologous", meaning that they looked quite similar to one another. This is difficult to comprehend, because a CME re-structures the coronal magnetic field in an irreversible manner, so that an exactly homologous event could not happen theoretically. There is clear evidence in these events for newly emerging magnetic flux that feeds the successive restructurings. The discovery? The data strongly suggest that the emerging flux has a coherent pattern extending over the three days of homologous flaring. This pattern apparently persists in such detail that extraordinarily similar flares and CMEs can occur repeatedly, with the new magnetism re-creating the coronal structures as fast as necessary. This is perhaps the best-observed example of this kind of coherence and has implications for the organization of magnetism beneath the surface of the Sun. PUBLIC USE OF SXT IMAGES We are continuing to make Yohkoh/SXT images available for a variety of uses. Efforts continue to make selected images available on the LMSAL SXT WWW homepage (http://www.lmsal.com/SXT/). We receive requests for the Yohkoh posters (#2 and #3) by way of the form on the SXT homepage. Currently we receive requests via our homepage at the rate of 2 or 3 per day. The WEB access statistics in December were unavailable due to a computer glitch. Page 3 YOHKOH OPERATIONS AND HEALTH Yohkoh and the SXT continue to function very well. SXT experienced a normal level of Single Event Upset (SEU) events during the month: Bit Map Error 01-Dec-00 Pass 1: 001201-1444 Recovered in the same pass Bit Map Error 23-Dec-00 Pass 2: 001223-0927 Recovered in the same pass Bit Map Error 25-Dec-00 Pass 1: 001225-0824 Recovered in the same pass Page 4 DATA FLOW Month Full Frame Images Observing Region Images Received Lost Received Lost Loss % QT FL Tot Thru Oct-98 578290 215134 2323644 515667 2839311 1037553 26.50 Nov-98 6442 1695 25124 26948 52072 9920 16.00 Dec-98 5962 2005 21490 15770 37260 10561 22.08 Jan-99 5494 1825 20087 17620 37707 9622 20.33 Feb-99 5729 1525 30802 9798 40600 10630 20.75 Mar-99 6807 1844 24721 12354 37075 10064 21.35 Apr-99 6715 1371 25113 4179 29292 7791 21.01 May-99 6459 1807 35467 12092 47559 13757 22.44 Jun-99 6217 1915 23542 13051 36593 10086 21.61 Jul-99 5591 1745 20409 25747 46156 9670 17.32 Aug-99 6827 2503 21725 23361 45086 11844 20.80 Sep-99 5768 2011 21890 3434 25324 10846 29.99 Oct-99 5768 2308 22994 10487 33481 11517 25.59 Nov-99 7552 3425 20754 18772 39526 11974 23.25 Dec-99 7488 2791 22047 5354 27401 10663 28.01 Jan-00 5426 1736 19802 4040 23842 8958 27.31 Feb-00 6533 2052 21801 7017 28818 8982 23.76 Mar-00 6447 2007 22692 21914 44606 11192 20.06 Apr-00 6412 2100 31195 7214 38409 13438 25.92 May-00 6995 1556 28175 14961 43136 8967 17.21 Jun-00 7043 1722 24413 16369 40782 8690 17.57 Jul-00 6674 1920 23505 31739 55244 10235 15.63 Aug-00 9623 1996 20925 1197 22122 6577 22.92 Sep-00 8835 2240 22233 5764 27997 8307 22.88 Oct-00 6348 1524 23309 6629 29938 7916 20.91 Nov-00 6525 1639 20087 10318 30405 6972 18.65 Dec-00 442 90 1040 110 1150 224 16.30 Total 744412 264486 2918986 841906 3760892 1286956 25.50 Number of Full Frame Images Received: 744412 Number of Observing Region Images Received: 3760892 Total: 4505304 Approximate Number of Shutter Moves/CCD Readouts: 7657455 NOTES: * The loss of images is mainly due to BDR overwrites, but there are also occasional DSN dumps which are lost. * It is common to have observing regions which contain more than 64 lines, which requires multiple exposures to make a single observing region image. This is why the number of shutter moves is larger than the number of images received plus those lost. Page 5 ENGINEERING SUMMARY TABLE Month Avg Dark Level # of Dark Spikes CCD Warmings Front Optical (DN) (e/sec) Over 48 Over 64 High / # Support Trans Temp /Days Temp (%) Nov-98 58.14 1035.8 223428 34264 22.5 / 2 23.4 N/A Dec-98 57.90 1027.0 222113 32689 23.8 N/A Jan-99 58.70 1056.9 227320 37869 23.1 N/A Feb-99 58.65 1055.1 224924 37889 23.2 N/A Mar-99 59.26 1078.1 227900 43051 21.7 N/A Apr-99 58.81 1060.9 225818 38724 23.8 / 1 21.4 N/A May-99 58.78 1059.8 225791 38435 21.6 N/A Jun-99 59.40 1083.0 230091 42440 22.0 N/A Jul-99 59.97 1104.5 231281 47075 23.8 / 1 20.6 N/A Aug-99 59.39 1083.0 229319 43067 21.7 N/A Sep-99 60.15 1111.2 231820 49868 21.8 N/A Oct-99 59.66 1092.9 229735 45263 22.8 N/A Nov-99 59.90 1102.0 231288 47102 23.0 N/A Dec-99 61.11 1147.3 234385 57376 22.5 / 2 25.3 N/A Jan-00 60.27 1115.9 233820 50214 23.4 N/A Feb-00 60.88 1138.5 234925 56305 23.8 N/A Mar-00 60.71 1132.5 234146 54564 22.9 N/A Apr-00 61.10 1147.0 235252 58348 22.2 N/A May-00 61.01 1143.6 234463 57246 21.2 N/A Jun-00 61.35 1156.3 235998 60373 22.8 N/A Jul-00 61.89 1176.7 237949 66181 19.3 N/A Aug-00 61.26 1153.1 236088 59872 56.9 / 2 21.7 N/A Sep-00 61.08 1146.2 235644 58449 22.1 N/A Oct-00 61.65 1167.6 237518 63524 23.1 N/A Nov-00 60.95 1141.4 235715 56905 24.2 N/A NOTES: * The dark current calculations are using full half resolution 2.668 sec images not taken in during the SAA. The dark current rate assumes a "fat zero" of 30.5 DN and a gain of 100 e/DN. * The entrance filter failure of 13-Nov-92 eliminated the capability of taking optical images, so the optical transmission is not available after Nov-92. It also caused an increase in the dark current signal, however some of the increase shown here is an increase in the readout noise and is not a function of exposure duration. Page 6 PERSONNEL TRAVEL SXT Foreign Travel between 1-DEC-00 and 31-DEC-00 BARTUS 3-DEC-00 31-DEC-00 * 29 (total of 29 days) HUDSON 2-DEC-00 9-DEC-00 8 27-DEC-00 31-DEC-00 * 5 (total of 13 days) SLATER 1-DEC-00 * 5-DEC-00 5 8-DEC-00 23-DEC-00 16 (total of 21 days) TAKEDA 1-DEC-00 * 30-DEC-00 30 (total of 30 days) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Grand Total of 93 days for 4 people NOTE: The "*" signifies travel that actually ends after 31-DEC-00 SXT Foreign Travel between 1-JAN-01 and 31-JAN-01 BARTUS 1-JAN-01 * 31-JAN-01 * 31 (total of 31 days) HUDSON 1-JAN-01 * 16-JAN-01 16 (total of 16 days) TAKEDA 6-JAN-01 31-JAN-01 * 26 (total of 26 days) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Grand Total of 73 days for 3 people NOTE: The "*" signifies travel that actually ends after 31-JAN-01 Respectfully submitted, Thomas R. Metcalf Frank Friedlaender Page 7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 | 10 January 2001 December 2000 |------------------------------- | 6. PERFORMING ORG | CODE: O/L9-41 -----------------------------------------------|------------------------------- 7. AUTHOR(S) | 8. PERFORMING ORGANIZA- T. R. Metcalf | TION REPORT NO: F. M. Friedlaender | |------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------|10. WORK UNIT NO. 9. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME AND ADDRESS | Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space |------------------------------- Advanced Technology Center, O/L9-41, B/252 |11. CONTRACT OR GRANT NO. 3251 Hanover Street, Palo Alto Ca. 94304 | NAS8 - 00119 -----------------------------------------------|------------------------------- 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 Contact: Larry Hill | of December 2000 |------------------------------- |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) | | None | None | 7 | ------------------------|------------------------|-----------------|-----------