REPORT FROM ISAS, 11-Jan-93
L. Acton

It has been a busy week and I'm tired out so this will be a brief report. 
Yohkoh and SXT are continuing to operate well.  The sun has been quite
quiet but a few flares have been observed.  We have supported the HIREGS
antarctic balloon mission as best we can,  Hugh Hudson has been the SXT
Chief Observer for this campaign.

Last week it was observed that the SXT thin filter images were "freckled"
with small dark spots.  It was determined that these were from tiny
droplets of condensate on the CCD.  This was observed before in optical
images but never in x-rays.  The offending freckles disappeared after the
CCD was baked out at +20C for 24 hours.  We are sure glad that we decided
to include a bakeout heater in the design of the SXT!  We will repeat this
bakeout about each 3 months.  It is interesting that the CCD is still
collecting contaminate after over one year in orbit--inside an instrument
that we took every effort to keep clean and outgassing free.

The SXT light leak problem has not gotten any worse and the operations
are being simplified with gradually improving software and more experience.
The number of duty scientists has been decreased to 3 at ISAS and 2 at the
KSC tracking station.  SXT real time passes are no longer monitored at
ISAS.  Yohkoh is beginning to lose some station contacts to 2 other ISAS
spacecraft, Akebono and Astro-D.  Astro-D is presently in flight
preparation at KSC aiming for an launch on about 12 February.

Presently U-side personnel at ISAS include Hudson, Linford, Strong and
Acton.  Canfield arrives tomorrow and Acton leaves on the 13th.  A 2-day
workshop was held at ISAS on 8 and 9 January for informal discussions of
work different people are doing with the SXT full resolution partial frame
image data.  It was quite delightful to see the variety of work underway.