02 December 1996 M Weber SXT CHIEF OBSERVER'S REPORT AND TABLE PLAN CHIEF OBSERVER'S REPORT for Week 48 25-Nov-96 to 01-Dec-96 SOLAR ACTIVITY Solar activity started to become more exciting this week with many C-class flares (and even an M-class flare!) from a mid-B background. Most of these flares were located in AR 7999, which spent the week travelling across the center of the disk. AR 7997, at the west limb, also displayed some activity. The KSC tohbans admired its loop structures all week. Since there were no campaigns scheduled for Week 48, the SXT was set to track AR 7999 with PFIs; the repeated, intense flaring induced the associated SXT Chief Observers to re-evaluate some of the longer exposures in the SXT tables. Although we will now be looking at the quiet side of the Sun, could it be that we have already passed through the nadir of solar activity for this cycle? SXT INSTRUMENT STATUS SXT had another week of smooth operations. CAMPAIGNS There were no campaigns or coordinated observations in Week 48, so the Chief Observer chose to follow AR 7999 across the disk with the PFIs. SEMINARS On Wednesday, Nov 27, Yohkoh people tromped over to A-toh to attend the ISAS Space Plasma Physics Group's seminar, which featured our own Dr Hugh Hudson discoursing upon "Being Sceptical about the Classical Reconnection Model for Solar Flares." The SPP Group warmly invited us to present more talks in the future. The next day, Thursday, Nov 28, the Yohkoh seminars restarted. This time we were treated to two talks-- B Schmieder (Meudon): "Filaments and Prominences as seen in SoHO/CDS and SUMER" Dr Schmieder arrived at ISAS on Monday, Nov 25. Her talk was related to the follow-up analysis she is presently doing on the Yohkoh data collected during observing campaigns in June and September. N Nitta (LMPARL): "Hard X-rays from Microflares" Dr Nitta did double duty this week, since he was also an SSOC tohban in addition to giving this talk! SXT TABLE PLAN FOR WEEK 49 (1-Dec-96 to 7-Dec-96) We presently do not know of any campaigns planned for this week. On Thursday we will test run a table for coordinated observations with JOP057 (polar jets) coming up next week. Because we are watching the AR on the west limb at the beginning of the week, we have delayed the dark calibration table until Wednesday. The weekly diffusers are included as part of a standard table on Thursday. All terminator opportunities are expected to be used. KSC Time (start) in JST Pass Table ID _____________(= UT + 9 hrs)______#_______________________________ Sunday 01-DEC-96 14:37 4 961201 P4 ARS1 STANDARD Monday OPERATIONS HOLIDAY Tuesday 03-DEC-96 13:32 4 961203 P4 ARS1 STANDARD Wednesday 04-DEC-96 13:51 4 961204 P4 ARS1 DARKCAL Thursday 05-DEC-96 10:43 2 961205 P2 ARS2 POLAR 14:10 4 961205B P4 ARS1 STD+DIFF Friday 06-DEC-96 09:19 2 961206 P2 ARS2 STANDARD Saturday 07-DEC-96 11:21 4 961207 P4 ARS2 STANDARD *** Please note that this table plan may change *** Continuing requests: We request that KSC tohbans continue to dump a patrol image each time an SXT table is loaded to facilitate the study of optimizing ARS parameters during quiet times. SSOC TOHBAN, please e-mail any terminator schedule to the chief observer (sxt_co@isass0) so that he can decide about filters and offpoints.