EIT Science Planner's Guide

 

The planner's guide is meant to serve as an introduction to people who have accepted the challenge of coordinating EIT observations. A list of the previous planners is available on the Web.

Tour of Duty

Each planner is on duty for four weeks, and then is nominally on call during the next planner's shift.The EIT planner endorses several responsibilities including:
The planner is responsible for all EIT observations throughout the duration of their shift (including evenings and weekends) unless otherwise arranged. Planning responsibilities generally begin a few weeks before your shift; often JOPs (Joint Observing Programs) require a few weeks of preparation, and will span more than one planning shift. A typical shift starts on a sunday morning and ends a saturday night. However, in order to ensure a smooth transition, the upcoming planner must attend the weekly meeting held the friday preceeding his shift and must starts to monitor the EIT housekeeping data on saturday.

Preparing for a Planning Shift

If you have an impending shift, the best way to ensure a smooth transition is to contact the current planner and arrange some practice sessions with her/him. A planner should check the SOHO monthly schedule and the most recent SPWG (Science Planning Working Group) meeting minutes to determine the upcoming observations. A list of JOP descriptions is available. Once the upcoming JOPs are determined, the EIT JOP contacts list assigns an EIT team member to most of the JOPs. The associated team member should be contacted to determine whether EIT will participate in the JOP. Sometimes the turnaround time between EIT team members, planners, and JOP leaders can be a couple of weeks, so it is best to begin discussing the JOP a few weeks in advance.

If you are a new EIT planner, give your contact information (phone number, pager, etc.) to the SOCs. Make also sure htat you have the conatct information of EIT team members.

Finally, in the mailing program on gavroche (see below), change the forward e-mail address to yours so that you recieve the e-mails directed to the EIT planner.

 

Planning Guidelines

Daily, weekly, monthly

Wether localy or remotely, a lot of the planning job is done on gavroche, the planner's workstation. This machine is used for quick-look reformatting, auto-movie making and a host of other critical tasks. It runs the VMS operating system, with wich most people are not familiar. If you are not sure of what you are doing, ask a more experienced EIT team member.

 

Daily (before the daily meeting)

Status of the sun: monitoring the most recent activity, and knowing the times of recent images are very helpful in daily meetings. Knowing the approximate time of the last 304 and 195 Å images is particularly helpful.

Daily (after daily meeting)

Daily (last thing you do)

Planning of observing sequences

Weekly
Monthly

The EIT planner is now in charge of updating about once a month the calibration lamps database and one routine of the EIT software. Check the Archive and Software section of this guide for a quick how-to.

Engineering Sequence:
Below is a preliminary list of observations and procedures that should be regularly obtained in order to evaluate the health and safety of the instrument.
1) Dark exposures - weekly: 1 20 second, quarterly: series from 1 sec to 1000 sec in steps of 2
2) Exposure time sequence - quarterly, series from 1/32 sec - 20 sec, one wavelength?
3) Calibration lamp exposure - weekly
4) Light leak test - strip across the top image with 284::clear, monitor level - weekly
5) Deep exposure - 6 minutes 195 Ang, monthly, look for 1 arcmin circles, other features
6) Photon transfer curve - need procedure from Russ and Scott, all wavelengths, after bakeout
7) Extended pixel edge response (Charge Transfer Efficiency -CTE) - use cal-lamp, use virtual pixels (1 block) off edge, monthly
8) CCD Bakeout - times are variable, but usually every four months
9) Intercal JOPS - SOHO runs several intercalibration exercises on a monthly basis. Elaine Einfalt has the descriptions of the sequences usually run - the planner should check with the other instrument teams to ensure that the sequence EIT is running is commensurate with the other observations.

 


Web curator: Frédéric Auchère
Responsible NASA official: Joseph B. Gurman, Facility Scientist, Solar Data Analysis Center
joseph.b.gurman@gsfc.nasa.gov
+1 301 286-4767
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Solar Physics Branch / Code 682

Last revised: Tuesday, December 25, 2001 2:32 PM - F. Auchère