SOHO SPWG Minutes



SPWG FINAL MINUTES
Friday 28 January 2005

1. Boundary conditions


- SOHO is upside down until the next manoeuvre, tentatively scheduled
  for 22 March.  We expect a small station keeping burn thanks to the
  excellent performance during last manoeuvre (delta-v shortfall of
  only 0.00006 m/sec - or about 8.5 inches per hour!).

- The March keyhole is currently being planned. We expect to have
  GOLF, VIRGO, MDI (VC1), LASCO/EIT (submode 5 minimum), and CELIAS
  data almost continuously (shorter periods excluding CELIAS and/or
  LASCO/EIT may occur). The pass schedule (more details on expected
  losses of normal VC1 to come) can be found at
  
     http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/soc/keyhole.mar05

  Some 26m stations are scheduled within the (revised) dates for the
  26m keyhole. It is possible that these passes will be executed
  mostly in medium rate, to improve the signal to noise ratio. This
  would mean much less MDI high rate, and longer delays to see data
  from recorded gaps.

- Scheduling windows for keyhole periods through 2005 are listed on the
  SOHO calendar. For estimated keyhole dates through 2008 see
  http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/soc/keyholes.txt

  NOTE ADDED AFTER MEETING: We will possibly move the High Gain
  Antenna by a fraction of a degree after the March keyhole, to avoid
  the "mini-keyholes" with degraded data that currently occur between
  each regular keyhole. Although workarounds might be possible
  (degradation does not usually occur on every single pass, not all
  the time, and going to medium rate should help), it would not work
  for MDI continuous contacts.

- TRACE eclipse season ends Feb 8 14:02 UT. Will still experience
  atmospheric absorption. 

  Starting 6 January, TRACE's normal uplink station will be in
  maintenance until mid-February. As a result, TRACE will have to send
  loads early (before 10am local time - times will vary).

- Except for Major Flare Watches, TRACE will be doing full disk mosaics
  if/when EIT is not able to do synoptic sets due to keyhole operations.

- MDI continuous contacts are listed in Section 2 a) below and on the
  SOHO calendar.

- ALL KNOWN submode dependent activities & submode changes:

* TOO           JOP153/MMOP003 Future Major Flare Watch (SM5 if SUMER 
                  observes target, SM6 otherwise), TBC
* TOO           JOP175 Extended Filaments at the Limb (see sect. 2a), SM6

* Feb 16,23     EIT Shutterless #18, SM6 (see times in Section 2a)
* Mar 2-Apr 1   26m Keyhole (Mar 10-24 34m Keyhole), SM5 (mostly)
* Mar 11        Submode change to Submode 5, 15 UT
* Apr 1-May 3   SUMER Campaign, SM5, TBC
* May 3         Submode change to Submode 6, TBC
* May 4,11      EIT Shutterless #19, SM6 (see times in Section 2a)
* May 12-14     IPS Measurements, LASCO/MERLIN/EISCAT/TRACE
* May 16        Submode change to Submode 5, 12 UT
* May 16-June 5 MEDOC Campaign, SM5, TBC
* Jun 5-25      26m Keyhole (Jun 10-20 34m Keyhole), SM5 or SM6
* Jun 5-25      Submode changes as required, ending with SM6
* Aug 24, 31    EIT Shutterless #20, SM6, date TBC for Aug 31
* Aug 29-Sep 29 26m Keyhole (Sep 7-21 34m Keyhole), SM6
* Oct 19,26     EIT Shutterless #21, SM6, TBC
* Nov 1-Dec 15  SUMER Campaign, SM5, TBC
* Dec 3-21      26m Keyhole (Dec 7-16 34m Keyhole), SM5
* 06/05/01-06/06/15 SUMER Campaign
* 06/11/01-06/12/15 SUMER Campaign

- EIT Bakeout/Other

* Mar 11-Mar 31 EIT bakeout
 
- Commanding outlook: See AOB section.

2. Priorities for the coming month & more


a) Joint observing plans and campaigns

Continuing campaigns:

* 2002/02/25--  JOP136 Default RHESSI Collaborations (#6850), POC:Stein Haugan
* 2002/04/25--  JOP159 CMEs in Lyman-alpha (#6870), SWAN/LASCO/EIT/UVCS,
                  POC: Chris St Cyr, Eric Quemerais
* 2003/05/13--  Default CDS Co-observations with TRACE (#6950)
* 2003/07/01--  Network-Internetwork Oscillations (#7033), EIT/TRACE,
                  POC: Scott McIntosh
* '04/02-'05/02 Quiescent AR Loop Diagnostics (#7019), CDS/TRACE/EIT/SUMER,
                  POC: Helen Mason (h.e.mason@damtp.cam.ac.uk),
                  Local POC: CDS Planner
* 2004/02/19--  JOP175 Extended Filaments at the Limb, EIT/TRACE/LASCO/UVCS,
                  POC: Chris St Cyr (Chris.StCyr@nasa.gov)
* 2005/01/24--  JOP153/MMOP003 Future Major Flare Watch (#8002)

  Campaign #6850 is for "individual instrument studies" selecting an AR
  target [partially] influenced by the Max Millennium target selection
  to maximise chances of serendipitous co-observations.

  EIT supports all with half/full-res 195 Å CME watch in submode 5/6,
  except JOP175 getting half/full-res 304 Å CME watch in submode 5/6,
  and Network-Internetwork Oscillations which is TBD by Scott McIntosh.
  As long as the S/C is in submode 6, all EIT CME watch will be in full
  res.

  Campaign 7033 is dormant until after the TRACE eclipse season.

  There is a request from CDS to perform a few more runs of the 
  Quiescent AR Loops, so the campaign has been extended. It may be
  difficult to do this during TRACE eclipse season, however, and it
  may have to be extended further.

* Oct 26-Feb 8  TRACE in hard eclipse season

* Feb 3-6       MDI Continuous Contact

  MDI will be doing at least one 8 hour run of line profiles in the
  high resolution field of view.

* Feb 16        EIT Shutterless #18, segment 1, 14:00-16:40 UT, EIT/TRACE/MDI

  EIT requests that SVM is moved to 11UT for this day.

* Feb 23        EIT Shutterless #18, segment 2, 12:00-14:40 UT, EIT/TRACE/MDI

  EIT requests that SVM is moved to 11UT for this day.

  MDI can support both segments as long as they do not conflict with an
  MDI continuous contact period. Also, they would like to know which
  observing mode is preferable - full disk or high resolution.
  
* Feb 22-28     JOP155 Polar Coronal Jets, UVCS/CDS/EIT(TBC)/TRACE, 
                  POC: Danuta Dobrzycka (ddobrzyc@eso.org)

  Note: Added during/after meeting. TRACE and EIT support also
  wanted.
  
* Mar 2-Apr 1   26m Keyhole (Mar 10-24 34m Keyhole)

* Apr 1-3       MDI Continuous Contact

  No specific plans yet.

* Apr 1-May 3   SUMER Campaign (submode 5)

  See section 2c for details.

* May 1-15      Moat Flows and Magnetic Features Around Sunspots, 
                  MDI/TRACE/Sac Peak, 
                  POC: Mandy Hagenaar (hagenaar@lmsal.com), TBC

  MDI will support with high resolution mag/doppler/filtergrams.  We
  have requested extra DSN coverage for this time between 14-22UT
  daily.

  TRACE has been contacted, awaiting more details.

* May 4,11      EIT Shutterless #19, segment 1, 16:00-18:40 UT, EIT/TRACE/CDS

  A submode change to submode 6 is requested for May 3.

  MDI can support, as long as it does not conflict with Hagenaar's
  Sac Peak study above.

* May 12-14     IPS Measurements, LASCO/MERLIN/EISCAT/CDS/TRACE(TBC), 
                  POC: Andy Breen (azb@aber.ac.uk), Local POC: Kevin Schenk

  From Andy Breen: The idea is to have UVCS (and ideally CDS) giving
  us bulk outflow speeds from the low corona outward until UVCS runs
  out of signal-to-noise so that we have something to calibrate the
  drift speeds of the LASCO C2 brightenings against. If we can
  establish that the C2 brightenings are drifting at the background
  flow speeds then we will be able to say how much faster the ~100 km
  scale-size stuff which produces IPS is moving (unfortunately the
  radio source we're using for IPS doesn't quite come in close enough
  for a good overlap with UVCS).

  During the IPS study, EIT will have regular synoptics along with
  half resolution 195 CME watch, given that submode 6 is available.
  They will be in half resolution through the following MEDOC
  campaign.

  TRACE had not recieved an official request for this. It will likely
  conflict with Hagenaar's Sac Peak study above, which has precedence
  and will likely require continuous observing of the target most of
  the time.

* May 16        Submode Change from Submode 6 to 5, TBC

* May 16-June 5 MEDOC Campaign, TBC

* May 25-Jun 8  MDI Continuous Contact for 3 days (week 17-18), TBC

  No specific plans yet.

* May 26-Jun 8  Ulysses Quadrature, UVCS

  UVCS will support - other instruments TBD.
  SUMER support is TBD.

* Jun-Jul       Fine Magnetic Structures/Coronal Heating, 
                  SST/VTT/DOT/CDS/EIT/MDI/TRACE,
                  POC: Yukio.Katsukawa@nao.ac.jp (12 days total), TBC

  We're awaiting more information after the time allocation is done.

* Jun-Jul       JOP157 Bright points in ARs, CDS/EIT/MDI/THEMIS/VTT,
                  POC: Etienne.Pariat@obspm.fr, (2 weeks total), TBC

  EIT will support with 195 CME Watch unless in keyuhole/bakeout.

  We're awaiting more information after time allocation is done.

* Jun 5-25      26m Keyhole (Jun 10-20 34m Keyhole)

* Jun 24-Aug 31 MDI 60 Day Continuous Contact, TBC

  Default plan is to run full disk Doppler (probably also with full disk
  magnetograms).

b) Intercalibration activities

  Last Intercal 1: Jan 5

* Week 5/6        ICAL01, CDS/EIT


c) Individual instrument plans

MDI:

  See section 1 (boundary conditions) for MDI continuous contact
  periods.

  For the March keyhole, MDI will likely reduce the ALT Cadence to
  less than 15 per day, but will likely not downlink any of the ALT
  Mags in the 5kbps telemetry unless a significant amount of the 70m
  antenna contacts are taken away and we think its necessary to ensure
  one Mag per day get to us.

  If DSN coverage for the June keyhole is similar, MDI's plans will be
  similar.

  All requests for MDI support need to be made several months ahead of
  time and sent to mdi-ops@mdisas.nascom.nasa.gov. Even outside
  keyholes, MDI can only do 1-minute cadence observations when we have
  contact and there is no recorder dump in progress.

  MDI's REQUEST page is at
  http://mdisas.nascom.nasa.gov/coordination.txt NOTE: Listing of a
  study on that page means *only* that a request has been received, not
  that it will necessarily be supported.

  A description of MDI Observing Modes most used for JOPs and campaigns
  (FD vs. HR) can be found at http://mdisas.nascom.nasa.gov/Collaborate.
  Anyone requesting MDI observations is encouraged to read this page in
  order to have a better idea of what observing modes would be best suited
  for a particular study.  More detailed information about how MDI
  operates, observational constraints and telemetry information can be
  found at http://mdisas.nascom.nasa.gov/MDI_Collaboration_Details.

UVCS:

  For weekly plans, see the SOHO calendar and the UVCS planning page:
  http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/uvcs/observations/obst.html

  The following are listed because of NRT requirements or as candidates
  for collaboration (with e.g. CDS):

 * Jan 31-Feb 06   Streamer Study
 * Feb 07-Feb 15   Observations of the south polar coronal hole
 * Feb 16-17       UVCS Star Observations
 * Feb 20-21       UVCS Star Observations
 * Feb 22-28       Observations of Coronal Jets (JOP155)

   UVCS is interested in support from TRACE, EIT and CDS for the
   coronal jets study, probably along the lines of JOP155. Details
   will follow if there is any chance of support for this?

CDS:
  See their request diary for details:
    http://solar.bnsc.rl.ac.uk/scientificops/request.shtml

  CDS would like to participate in the streamer study, Feb 1-6.

  CDS received a request for JOP157 with THEMIS for two weeks in the
  June-July period. CDS is willing to support, but detailed
  arrangements and time allocation can only be confirmed when the
  dates are known.

LASCO/EIT:

* Feb 16,23     EIT Shutterless

SUMER:

  SUMER plans to resume operations from April 1 - May 3. Current plans
  are:

  Detector checkout
  Enrico Landi; active region diagnostic
  Nour-Eddine Raoufi & Davina Innes; UVCS - SUMER CME campaign 
    (details tbd.)
  TongJiang Wang; joint Solar-C/SUMER study on quiescent AR loops
  Uri Feldman & Enrico Landi; He abundance study

   Weekly planners are still tbd.

TRACE:

  Hard eclipses end February 8, followed by an extended period of 
  EUV absorption.

  NOTE that TRACE in general reserves the right to withdraw support from
  agreed, existing collaborations if a sufficiently "good active region"
  is called by the Max Millennium group.

3. AOB



* Next SPWG: Friday 25 February, right after weekly meeting in the EOF.

The rest are FYI items:

* If anyone has projects that require high-cadence MDI support, now is a
  good time to ask! If you need MDI data, make sure you request it
  specifically. There is no significant change in the shutter
  performance over the last 10 months; monitoring continues, but no
  immediate changes in operations are planned.

* DSN support should be requested at least 6 months in advance.  Keep
  this in mind for: ground-based collaborations that require MDI
  support, stellar/shutterless observations that require NRT, etc.

* Commanding outlook:

  Except for a few small gaps each week, contact times look great for
  normal working hours.