Page 1 PROGRESS REPORT THE SOLAR-A SOFT X-RAY TELESCOPE (SXT) PROGRAM (CONTRACT NAS8-00119) (for August 2001) 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 shock of the decreased funding and its implication is just being felt. The project is trying to structure a viable program that will allow the SXT instrument to be operated into FY 2002. SOLAR ACTIVITY In early August, solar activity increased after the lull we experienced in July. Yohkoh observed an M1.5 flare on August 3 and an M1.7 flare on August 5. In mid-August, activity remained at a moderate level with the GOES background around the C1 level. Yohkoh observed a C9.7 class flare on August 14. After this event, Solar activity declined compared with the previous week. No strong active regions were on the near side of the solar disk, and reported flares were all less than M-class. However, there was a significant proton event on 16 August which probably come from an active region on the far side of the disk. In late August, activity increased dramatically with the appearance of NOAA 9591. This region is the return of 9557, the suspected source of the proton event from the backside of the Sun recorded on the 16th, and the subsequent geomagnetic storm on the 17th. Yohkoh observed an X-class (X 5.3) white light flare on 25-Aug which we report on below. In addition to the X flare, there were 13 GOES M-class flares (M1-M3) and many C-class flares. CAMPAIGNS In week 34, we supported the 'Quiet Sun Campaign' lead by BBSO and CDS. We tried 1-step deeper exposures in FFIs on the 20th and high cadence PFIs in ARS0 pointing on the 21st. The support lasted until AR 9591 returned and showed strong flare activity. Yohkoh obtained support observations for the balloon experiment (flying the HX spectrometer, lead by a NAOJ and ISAS team) during the period from 23:00 UT on the 28th to 02:00 UT on the 29th. Although no major flares occurred during the flight, their instruments worked perfectly an obtained valuable data. SCIENCE Canfield, Leamon, and Pevtsov, continued their work on sigmoids and magnetic clouds. Their study shows that the large-scale dipole leading-field paradigm for magnetic clouds, developed for filament-associated eruptions, does not work for active-region eruptions from sigmoids. Rather, they follow a weak solar-cycle (Hale-polarity) rule. Also, rather than the strong hemispheric handedness rule shown by magnetic clouds associated with erupting filaments, only a weak hemispheric handedness rule is shown by magnetic clouds associated with erupting active-region sigmoids. Finally, independent of handedness, erupting sigmoids tend to produce at least moderate geomagnetic storms. Nitta analyzed all the X-class flares since 1996 that have good Yohkoh coverage, and found that (1) most of them are non-LDEs, corresponding to their compact sizes, (2) more than 2/3 of them are associated with halo or extended CMEs, (3) only 20 % of them seem to have hard X-ray spectra extending to the MeV ranges, (4) there is hardly any soft-hard-harder pattern in the hard X-ray spectral evolution, (5) the association with SEP events does not seem to strongly depend on their location around W60 or their CME association. On August 25, 2001 Yohkoh observed an X5.3 flare. This flare had a huge submillimeter excess emission from relativistic electrons in strong magnetic fields. TRACE observed a white light flare which is normally attributed to high-energy particles. Yohkoh observed both hard X-rays, showing us the lower-energy electrons, and gamma-rays, showing us the relativistic electrons and the high-energy protons. In short, we should have enough modern, high-quality data to understand at last the white-light continuum. This indeed represents a step beyond the pioneering space-based observations of white-light flares carried out with Yohkoh's aspect camera! An informal session will be convened at the Yohkoh 10th anniversary meeting to discuss this event. PUBLICATIONS Submitted: Schrijver,C.J., Aschwanden,M.J., and Title,A. 2002, Solar Phys. "Transverse Oscillations in Coronal Loops Observed with TRACE: I. Movies, an Overview of Events, and the Identification of Required Conditions" Aschwanden, M.J., Schrijver,C.J., DePontieu,B. and Title,A. 2002, Solar Phys. "Transverse Oscillations in Coronal Loops Observed with TRACE: II. Measurements of Geometric and Physical Parameters" Sattarov, I, Pevtsov, A. A., Hojaev, A. S., Sherdonov, Ch. T. 2001, "X-ray Bright Points and Photospheric Bipoles During Cycle 22 and 23", Astrophys. Journal Accepted: Aschwanden , M.J. 2001, ApJL, "Revisiting the Determination of the Coronal Heating Function from Yohkoh Data" Published: 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 August were 105203 accesses and 6,723 Mbytes transferred for the SXT website and 118281 accesses and 3,379 Mbytes transferred for the YPOP website. 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: SXT Bit Map Error 19-Aug-01 Pass 1: 010819-1133 Recovered in the second pass. SXT Bit Map Error 24-Aug-01 Pass 2: 010824-0929 Recovered in the same pass. SXT Bit Map Error 27-Aug-01 Pass 1: 010827-0722 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 Jun-99 627853 229383 2528976 627248 3156224 1121229 26.05 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 6585 1918 20718 5422 26140 8071 23.59 Jan-01 5610 1231 20469 3161 23630 7317 23.64 Feb-01 6917 1497 25366 1144 26510 7871 22.89 Mar-01 6851 1272 26315 17139 43454 9470 17.89 Apr-01 5531 1804 15991 20001 35992 9216 20.39 May-01 7410 1758 21042 1767 22809 7152 23.87 Jun-01 7037 1024 24643 5760 30403 5075 14.30 Jul-01 5028 1343 12700 301 13001 4487 25.66 Aug-01 1677 273 6395 308 6703 1680 20.04 Total 796354 276778 3090571 896568 3987139 1348316 25.27 Number of Full Frame Images Received: 796354 Number of Observing Region Images Received: 3987139 Total: 4783493 Approximate Number of Shutter Moves/CCD Readouts: 8168381 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 (%) Jul-99 59.78 1097.5 231236 46337 23.8 / 1 20.6 N/A Aug-99 59.39 1083.0 229319 43067 21.7 N/A Sep-99 60.04 1107.3 231585 49084 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 60.55 1126.3 233523 53920 22.5 / 2 25.3 N/A Jan-00 60.27 1115.9 233820 50214 23.4 N/A Feb-00 60.93 1140.6 235079 56836 23.8 N/A Mar-00 60.72 1132.8 234174 54661 22.9 N/A Apr-00 61.10 1147.0 235252 58348 22.2 N/A May-00 61.00 1143.1 234569 57445 21.2 N/A Jun-00 61.19 1150.3 235622 58946 22.8 N/A Jul-00 61.96 1179.3 238114 66905 19.3 N/A Aug-00 61.27 1153.4 236108 59965 56.9 / 2 21.7 N/A Sep-00 61.08 1146.2 235644 58449 22.1 N/A Oct-00 61.44 1159.5 237142 61667 23.1 N/A Nov-00 60.99 1142.7 235849 57271 24.2 N/A Dec-00 61.59 1165.2 237454 63656 23.8 / 2 21.8 N/A Jan-01 61.64 1167.3 238962 62922 22.2 N/A Feb-01 61.84 1174.6 239218 65324 23.5 N/A Mar-01 61.89 1176.7 239128 65898 23.1 N/A Apr-01 61.92 1177.5 239784 66169 22.6 N/A May-01 62.25 1189.9 240631 69412 22.8 N/A Jun-01 62.17 1187.1 240572 68588 21.6 N/A Jul-01 62.69 1206.7 241552 74111 23.5 N/A Aug-01 62.60 1203.1 241137 73543 21.7 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-AUG-01 and 31-AUG-01 BARTUS 1-AUG-01 * 31-AUG-01 * 31 (total of 31 days) HUDSON 31-AUG-01 31-AUG-01 * 1 (total of 1 days) TAKEDA 1-AUG-01 * 31-AUG-01 * 31 (total of 31 days) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Grand Total of 63 days for 3 people NOTE: The "*" signifies travel that actually ends after 31-AUG-01 SXT Foreign Travel between 1-SEP-01 and 30-SEP-01 BARTUS 1-SEP-01 * 30-SEP-01 * 30 (total of 30 days) FLETCHER 8-SEP-01 30-SEP-01 * 23 (total of 23 days) HUDSON 1-SEP-01 * 16-SEP-01 16 21-SEP-01 30-SEP-01 * 10 (total of 26 days) TAKEDA 1-SEP-01 * 15-SEP-01 15 (total of 15 days) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Grand Total of 94 days for 4 people NOTE: The "*" signifies travel that actually ends after 30-SEP-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 September 2001 August 2001 |------------------------------- | 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 August 2001 |------------------------------- |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 | ------------------------|------------------------|-----------------|-----------