SXT Status Report
                   30 July 1996 - 19 August 1996
                         (Weeks 31 - 33)

                        S. Savy, H. Hudson


INTRODUCTION

Solar activity relaxed during these three weeks. There were some
operations difficulties (including an assault on KSC by Typhoon #12 of
the season). The summer holidays seemed to slow the pace of research
as many people wandered off... 

SOLAR ACTIVITY

The second rotation of AR 7978 (now called AR 7981), which had made an
X-class flare and CMEs on its previous rotation, was more pedestrian.
As reported in our last edition, it did "turn on"  at the east limb
just as precipitously as it had turned off on the west limb, and
subsequently remained at almost constant brightness. A competing
region made the drop at the second W limb passage less sudden. The
flaring behavior changed during these two rotations (more big flares
per unit small flare on the first passage).  This interesting fact
plus the region's near-uniqueness while on the disk, make it a good
region to study for technical purposes - for example, the BCS
wavelength calibration  offset as a function of orbital phase; or the
flare-microflare  frequency distribution, which appeared to change
with time.

SXT INSTRUMENT STATUS

SXT had no problems and functioned well.

SXT CALIBRATION ACTIVITIES

Normal terminator image accumulation has continued. We have installed
a 5' S/C W offpoint and are getting terminators there. The 5' E and W
offpoints are being used during the "whole Sun month" campaign
based upon SOHO JOP044.

CAMPAIGNS

Week 33 was the first week of support observations for the global coronal
campaign (Joint Observing Program (JOP) 44, with SoHO) .  This will
continue until mid-September and should provide an important database for
SXT observations of the quiet corona and help us track its large scale
structure. Sarah Gibson(GSFC) and Douglas Biesecker(Birmingham) are
coordinating the campaign on the SoHO side. 

For Yohkoh operations, the SXT weekly observing plan is available on the
Web at http://www.space.lockheed.com/SXT/html2/First_Light.html or with
"finger campaign@isass0.solar.isas.ac.jp | more"

See http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/operations/targets/today" for SoHO
target planning. 

VISITORS

Scientific visitors to ISAS during this period included Wang
Jingxiu from Beijing.

SCIENCE

Wang Jingxiu returned to Beijing, and a paper based upon his work at
ISAS was submitted the day he left. This may be the first time that a
visitor has succeeded in getting through to the point of submitting a
paper before departure - a good idea. But in this case it was not
because he cut corners; the work was done very carefully and
conservatively. It seems quite possible that further analysis of these
"shrinking loops", together with modeling of the MHD environment of
the active region, can actually teach us something quite interesting
about the forces at work shaping an active region.

SEMINARS

August 8:
J. Wang (ISAS/Beijing Astr. Obs.). 
"Shrinkage of X-ray Loops in AR7240"

This seminar was a pleasure for all, since Wang_san had done so much 
interesting data analysis, was working on an extremely interesting
project, and interacted so well with people at ISAS and NAO.

PERSONNEL

S. Savy returned from COSPAR. J. Wang left for Beijing; Hudson and
Khan left for Bozeman to attend the Chapman conference on CMEs there.

Week 31 Tohbans

SSOC: J.I. Khan, M. Ohyama
KSC: M. Takahashi, 
SXT Chief Observer: H. Hudson

Week 32 Tohbans

SSOC: K. Akita, N. Saita
KSC:  N. Suzuki, M. Takahashi
SXT Chief Observer: S. Savy

Week 33 Tohbans

SSOC: T. Kosugi, N. Miyazaki
KSC: N. Suzuki, M. Shimojo
SXT Chief Observer: S. Savy