SOHO SPWG Minutes



SPWG FINAL MINUTES
Friday 28 October 2005

1. Boundary conditions


- SOHO is right side up until the next manoeuvre, scheduled for 
  17 December.

- Scheduling windows for keyhole periods through 2009 are listed on
  the SOHO calendar and on http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/soc/keyholes.txt

  We've been warned that the March keyhole is likely to be very tight,
  with very few 70m stations. We'll be very close to the absolute
  minimum requirements to get MDI, GOLF and VIRGO continuous, which
  means everyone else gets very, very little.

- 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.

- KNOWN submode dependent activities & submode changes:

* TOO           JOP153/MMOP003 Future Major Flare Watch (SM5 if SUMER
                  observes target, SM6 otherwise)
* TOO           JOP175 Extended Filaments at the Limb (see sect. 2a), SM6
* Nov 30        EUNIS/MOSES launch, SM6, Date TBC
* Dec 3-20      26m Keyhole (Dec 6-17 34m Keyhole), SM5 or SM6(end)
* 2006:
* Jan 18,25     EIT Shutterless #22, 14:00-16:40 UT, SM6
* Feb 22-Mar 21 26m Keyhole (Feb 28-16 34m Keyhole), SM5/6
* Mar 29        Solar Eclipse, 08:34-11:48 UT, SM5, TBC
* Apr 12,19     EIT Shutterless #23, 18:00-20:40 UT, SM6
* May 1-June 15 SUMER Campaign, SM5, TBC
* May 27-Jun 14 26m Keyhole (May 31-Jun 11 34m Keyhole), SM5/6
* Jul 26,Aug 2  EIT Shutterless #24, SM6, TBC
* Aug 21-Sep 19 26m Keyhole (Aug 28-Sep 13 34m Keyhole), SM5/6
* Oct 18,25     EIT Shutterless #25, SM6, TBC
* Nov 1-Dec 15  SUMER Campaign, SM5, TBC
* Nov 24-Dec 11 26m Keyhole (Nov 27-Dec 08 34m Keyhole), SM5/6

  Some of the SUMER campaign dates overlap with keyholes - which is
  not a problem in itself (submode 5 will often be needed for keyholes
  anyhow) as long as potential periods of no SUMER data can be
  accepted.

- EIT Bakeout/Other

- TRACE Eclipse period

* Oct 14-Feb 17 TRACE Hard Eclipse Season

  TRACE will change to loading only 3 days a week next week (week 44).

- Commanding outlook - see http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/soc/dsn/

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
* 2004/02/19--  JOP175 Extended Filaments at the Limb (#7135), 
                  EIT/TRACE/LASCO/UVCS,
                  POC: Chris St Cyr (Chris.StCyr@nasa.gov)
* 2005/09/20--  JOP153/MMOP003 Future Major Flare Watch (#8004)

  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. Major Flare Watches will be in full-res even if
  it requires a submode change, unless the target is observed by
  SUMER.

  JOP175 will be listed as a top-priority TOO for February 18-27 and
  March 17-30.

* Oct 30        Daylight Saving Time ends at 1 UT (Europe) and 6 UT (US), 
                  then GSFC local = UT-5 hours = Central Europe-6 hours

* Nov 7-22      Streamer Study, UVCS/CDS

* Nov 9-13      MDI Continuous Contact

  In light of a recent MDI focus change to better focus for high
  resolution observing, we will do a high resolution Continuous
  Contact run.  We will take 1 minute cadence, extracted Magnetograms,
  Dopplergrams and Filtergrams. The FOV is 420"x420" and we will
  likely center on disk center for the entire CC period.

  We are looking into having New Norcia covering gaps/dovetailing
  handovers between Canberra and Madrid. This is still TBD due to
  uncertainty in the Venus Express launch schedule. With the 
  unofficial launch date of November 9, we may get support on
  November 12 and 13.

* Nov 30        Sounding Rocket Launch, MOSES/CDS/EIT/MDI/TRACE, POC: Charles
                  Kankelborg (kankel@solar.physics.montana.edu), TBC
* Nov 30        Sounding Rocket Launch, EUNIS/EIT/CDS/TRACE/VLA,
                  POC: Jeffrey.W.Brosius.1@gsfc.nasa.gov, TBC

  NOTE: New launch date. We've asked for backup stations during 15-21 UT.
  If we do not get a backup station, Charles & Jeff have asked to go to
  record - despite the loss of MDI high rate.

  MDI requests that the recording be kept as short as possible to 
  reduce the impact on MDI high rate times.

  Exact EIT details TBD, but will probably schedule a synoptic set plus
  additional full-res images.

* Nov 27-Dec 11 Ulysses Quadrature

  CDS has not received any request, but will consider advantages of
  joint observations.

  UVCS will try to support the quadrature as far into the keyhole as
  possible.

* Dec 3-20      26m Keyhole (Dec 6-17 34m Keyhole)

  The keyhole plan will hopefully be ready early November. If you have
  any special requests (i.e. planned collaborations that you'd like to 
  have telemetry for), please contact the SOCs.

b) Intercalibration activities

  Last Intercal 1: October 7 (with SUMER)

* Week 44       ICAL01 (#7113), CDS/EIT

* Week 48       ICAL01 (#7113), CDS/EIT, TBC

c) Individual instrument plans

MDI:

  See section 2a for MDI continuous contact periods.

  MDI may reduce the ALT cadence during Keyholes to be less than 15 ALT
  magnetograms per day if the lack of high rate telemetry is such that
  we will lose all or almost all of the 15 ALT Magnetograms each day.
  The ALT cadence will be decided on an individual Keyhole basis and
  even a daily basis during each Keyhole depending on the 70m antenna
  availability at the time.

  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.

  MDI is currently in better focus for high resolution observing and
  we plan on doing as much high resolution observing as possible until
  ~Jan/Feb 2006. If anyone has HR requests, send email to
  mdi-ops@mdisas.nascom.nasa.gov.

UVCS:

  We plan to use the LyA detector for special observations in the
  future when appropriate.

  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):

* Oct 26-Nov 06 UVCS Suprathermal Seed Particle Population Measurements
* Nov 7-22      UVCS Streamer Study
* Nov 23-24     UVCS Observations of Del Sco

CDS:

* Oct 31-Nov 14 CDS Off-limb Active Region Movie, 
                  POC: Eoghan O'Shea (eos@arm.ac.uk)

  CDS will also participate in the UVCS streamer study, on selected
  dates 7-20 November. Dates TBD by CDS planners in consultation with
  Michael Uzzo.

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

LASCO/EIT:

SUMER:

  SUMER will be observing again in the spring. A request for eclipse
  observations (March 29) has been received.

TRACE:

  The outcome of the Senior Review of all Sun-Solar System missions this
  fall will determine the level of support (or no support) for each
  mission in the future. TRACE operations will continue through at least
  the rest of the year.

  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.

  The TRACE eclipse season is expected to end February 17. TRACE will 
  change to load plans only 3 days a week starting next week (week 44).

3. AOB


* Next SPWG:

F Nov 18	SPWG after Daily/Weekly Meetings

The rest are FYI items:

* If anyone has projects that require high rate (i.e. 1 minute
  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.