SOHO Daily Meeting Minutes for Thursday, 9 Sept. 1999 Chaired by: J. Hollis (SOC) Notes by: R. Wu (UVCS) DOY: 252 ANNOUNCEMENTS ------------- * Next week is a "normal" week as far as science operations. DSS 27 beginning at 18:25 UT on Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday next week. * To update people: there are currently maneuvers planned for 21 September and 27 September with low fuel estimates. We will attempt to provide a schedule of activities on Monday afternoon or Tuesday of next week for instrument planning purposes. FOT REPORT ---------- Spacecraft Status: Nominal Spacecraft Anomalies: None Accomplished Activities: VIRGO, VC2 (1400), New tracking star (7.1 mag) Planned Activities: VIRGO, SWAN, Nom HGA Table Upcoming Operations: Sept. 11 - VC2 (1400-1500) Ground Anomalies: 251/0810 - Degraded TM; SPC60/JPL Comm router problem (8 hours, recoverable) 251/2320 - TM Dropout; Goldstone big pipe outage (8 minutes, recoverable) 252/0012 - Dummy command failed; D46 CPA failure (15 minutes delay) Other: Gyroless Ground Commissioning activities begin today SOLAR STATUS ------------ SOLAR ACTIVITY FORECAST: SOLAR ACTIVITY IS EXPECTED TO BE LOW. THERE IS A SLIGHT CHANCE, HOWEVER, FOR AN ISOLATED M-CLASS EVENT FROM REGION 8690 OR 8692. GEOPHYSICAL ACTIVITY FORECAST: THE GEOMAGNETIC FIELD IS EXPECTED TO BE MOSTLY UNSETTLED FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS, BUT THERE IS A FAIR CHANCE FOR SOME ACTIVE PERIODS, ESPECIALLY AT HIGH LATITUDES. THE ENHANCED ACTIVITY IS POSSIBLE DUE TO ADDITIONAL CORONAL HOLES THAT WILL BE ROTATING INTO FAVORABLE POSITIONS. EIT daily On-Line Solar Status and observations: http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/eit/plan/log_form19990909.html LASCO 9/09: All around 10:30 UT, Prominence liftoff, faint CME from Southeast around Central Meridian, slow outward moving loops in the Northwest INSTRUMENT STATUS ----------------- CDS: Nominal. JOP 109, JOP 097 UVCS: Nominal. Continuing scans from position angle 290 out to 7 Rsun LASCO: Nominal. C2 and C3 synoptics while CME watching. C2 pB campaign for whole sun month JOP 109 EIT: Nominal. 195A CME Watch in full resolution. JOP 109 MDI: Nominal. Full disk magnetograms and cropped dopplergrams for JOP 097 TRACE: Nominal. JOP 109, LyA Flarewatch, JOP 097 AOB: ---- * JOP 97 pointing for Friday, Sept. 10 (8 UT) from Karin Muglach: Target: AR 8693 (small spot, NE) x=-672", y=97 heliographic coordinates: E 46.00 deg, N 11.21 deg * SOHO-85 DISCOVERED: (supplied by Doug Biesecker) SOHO/LASCO discovered a somewhat unusual comet in this past week. First, the comet was discovered by Terry Lovejoy, an amateur astronomer from Australia, who looks at the LASCO data over the internet. Second, this comet had a very small perihelion distance, approaching to within a heliocentric distance of 12 solar radii. Not including the Kreutz sungrazing family of comets, there are only 19 other comets out of the more than 1000 known comets to have approached within 22 solar radii of the Sun. This comet is officially designated as C/1999 R1 (SOHO). Unfortunately, it is now too faint to observe with SOHO/LASCO and will probably be too faint to observe from the ground when it gets into a dark enough sky. To date, SOHO has discovered 85 comets. Eighty of these are members of the Kreutz sungrazing family of comets. None of the sungrazing comets observed by SOHO/LASCO survived perihilion passage. The other 5 comets all likely continue to orbit the Sun.