Report from ISAS

                     17 October  - 23 October, 1994
                            David Alexander



SUMMARY

During the week of 17-24 October SXT participated in the "Coronal Synoptic" 
campaign organized by Bernie Jackson.  This campaign continues until Oct 25.  
SXT operations went very well.    In addition we carried out a test for the
MSSTA rocket flight support on Oct 25.  The test for this proved very successful
in terms of the OP and SXT Table considerations.  There was some error in the 
carrying out of the operational procedures but we will ensure that this does
not happen during the actual rocket flight.

Active Region 7790 progressed across the solar limb this week and provided us
with some beautiful observations.  In particular there was an M3.2 flare on
October 19 at ~2100 UT.  The data from this flare was downloaded to a DSN station
and we await the data with interest.
   

OPERATIONS

Operations this week consisted of continued support for the Sac Peak
synoptic campaign, a test for next week's MSSTA rocket flight and a brief
preparation for the Nov 3 eclipse.  The activity off the limbs of the Sun
was such that we did not see the need for continuing the offpoints in support
of the synoptic study.  Long exposures in 2, and sometime 3, filters were
still done and this data should prove useful to the campaign.  Partial frame
images were taken of AR7790 as it traversed the disk.  Three filters were used
for good temperature coverage.  The variability in the 'thick' Be119 filter
showed that coronal loops in this active region illustrated the usefulness
of using the third filter.  A report of the SXT observations was transmitted
daily to the campaign collaborators.  The synoptic campaign continues until 
after the MSSTA rocket flight.  

The MSSTA rocket flight takes place on Oct 25 at 1745 UT.  The payload of this 
flight consists of an array of high-resolution normal incidence multilayer soft 
x-ray and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) telescopes and thin film interference coated 
far ultraviolet (FUV) telescopes for simultaneous full-diskThe primary scientific 
goals of the MSSTA flight encompass the study of the chromospheric network and
the chromosphere/corona interface, active regions, coronal loops, x-ray
bright points, polar plumes and coronal streamers. imagery of the
solar chromosphere, transition region and corona.  The X-ray coverage of this
payload provides a nice overlap with the Yohkoh/SXT instrument and simultaneous
observations by both should refine our knowledge of the SXT temperature
determination and yield some excellent science.  We have been providing daily
GIF files of the SXT data via our anonymous ftp site for use by the campaign
planners.


David Alexander continued the work on the terminator database while Jim
Lemen and Hugh Hudson were in Hawaii this week.  We are trying to identify
the variability of the scattered light in the SXT with various parameters,
including exposure time and pointing.  A fuller report will be produced when
the analysis has been completed.

There was a minor problem with isass0 again this week but it seems to have
recovered by itself. No additional SCSI CAM errors. 

SOLAR ACTIVITY

Solar activity was a bit more dramatic this week.  There were an M3.2 event 
registered by the GOES satellites at ap[proximately 2100 on Oct 19.   This 
flare originated in AR 7790 and was preceded by a B9 precursor.    This flare
had a long decay phase taking some 6 hours to fall from M3 to C1 level after an
initially steep rise.  The Yohkoh data from this flare were downloaded to DSN
and will not be available for a few days yet. 
Apart from this flare solar activity has maintained a fairly uniform output at 
approximate GOES level B2.


PERSONNEL

Gary Linford arrived on Wednesday and after an initial fight with jet-lag is
now fully fit and putting the MSU mountain bike through its paces.  The bike
is still recovering from some Sam 'The Man' Freeland's acrobatics.

Jim Lemen and Hugh Hudson attended the CDAW in Hawaii on Large-scale Solar
Eruptive Events.  I eagerly await a discussion of the results of this meeting.  
Any sniff at science is welcome in a week where operations dominate.

SCIENCE

Zdenek Svestka continues his study of the SXT database for flare events which show  
evidence for coronal arches.  His expertise with the MO disk now exceeds any of
us here which is a pity since he keeps breaking them. (Just a wee joke folks!).

Science is a dream we share.  I just wish I had time to do some while I was awake.

Thought for the week
====================

You worry too much about your job.  Stop it.  You are not paid enough
to worry.