-------------+--------------------------------------------+--------------------- | FFFFFF OOOOOO SSS | STScI | FF OO OO SS | STAN - FOS Analysis | FFFF OO OO SS | Number 6 News | FF OO OO SS | June 1995 | FF OOOOOO SSS | -------------+--------------------------------------------+--------------------- CONTENTS: - CYCLE 6 CALL FOR PROPOSALS - FOS NEWS - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, ARTICLES - SIMULATING ACQ/PEAK TARGET ACQUISITIONS WITH THE HST/FOS - SCIENCE WITH THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE - II - DIGITAL SKY SURVEY ON-LINE - RECENT FOS PREPRINTS - APPENDIX: FOS CONTACTS ================================================================================ CYCLE 6 CALL FOR PROPOSALS -------------------------- The cycle 6 call for proposals will be issued in early June. The proposal deadline for full electronic or paper plus electronic submissions is September 15, 1995. The results of the TAC deliberations will be distributed at the end of December. If you did not received a copy of the Phase I Cycle 6 Documentation, you can request paper copies at hst_query@stsci.edu. PostScript versions of the Instrument Handbooks and all other documentation will be available on STEIS shortly. ================================================================================ FOS NEWS -------- The instrument has been functioning nominally. Twenty nine proposals were executed successfully. The Cycle 5 calibration plan has been completed and approved (please see the article below) A new edition of the FOS Instrument Handbook is available. Paper copies can be requested at help@stsci.edu. A PostScript version will soon be available on STEIS. Calibration Workshop -------------------- The 2nd HST Calibration Workshop was held at STScI 15 through 17 May 1995, and was attended by some 140 participants. The following FOS papers were presented: ``FOS Flat Fields'' by C.D. Keyes. Noted that there is substantial variation over as little as +/- 0.2" from nominal aperture center. New Cycle 4 low-dispersion reference files have been delivered. Particular notice given to the blemish/feature on the FOS/BL G160L at about 1550 A (right on top of [CIV]!). ``FOS Dark Measures'' by J. Hayes. Analyzed all FOS darks since launch, and found the following mean values: FOS/RD ~ 0.010 counts/sec/diode FOS/BL ~ 0.005 counts/sec/diode Also confirmed the existence of the count-rate versus geomagnetic latitude relation. ``FOS Internal Wavelength Calibration'' by M. Dahlem. There are no PRE- to POST-COSTAR discontinuities. The complete analysis will take place over the summer. ``Update of FOS Dead Diode Tables'' by S. Martin and J. Christensen. outlined dead, noisy and problematic diodes to date. ``Y-Location of FOS spectra'' by S. Martin and A. Koratkar, discussed all Cycle 4 measures to date. Modest updates are planned later this summer. ``Repeatability of the FOS G130H Grating external wavelength zeropoint'' by A. Koratkar and I. Evans, found a zeropoint shift consistent with the filter-grating wheel repeatablility of 0.1 diode. The proceedings of the Workshop will be published. Some paper copies will be available and a PostScript version of the papers will posted on STEIS. FOS Cycle 5 Calibration Plan (CAL/FOS 125) ------------------------------------------ The FOS Calibration plan contains two types of programs: a) monitoring tests to check the stability of the instrument b) specific tests to characterize the instrumental performance The ISR describes in detail all the calibration proposals that will be executed in Cycle 5 and in particular the accuracy requirements and goals of each. Paper copies can be requested at help@stsci.edu. A PostScript version will be available on STEIS soon. Post-COSTAR FOS Aperture Transmissions for Point Sources (CAL/FOS 136) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This ISR describes the throughput of the 4.3 and 1.0 apertures for the COSTAR-deployed FOS. No significant difference is found between the predicted and actual values. Based on these findings new values of the aperture corrections will be implemented in the pipeline later this year. Paper copies can be requested at help@stsci.edu. A PostScript version will be available on STEIS soon. ================================================================================ QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, ARTICLES ----------------------------- We would like this newsletter to be a forum for interaction between users of the FOS. We'll be delighted to include short articles and notes about FOS data reduction and analysis. In addition, if you have questions for a wide (but "targeted") audience, you can send them too. The address to submit this material is: help@stsci.edu ================================================================================ Simulating ACQ/PEAK target acquisitions with the HST/FOS -------------------------------------------------------- Roeland P. van der Marel (marel@guinness.ias.edu) A common target acquisition strategy with the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is to use a sequence of so-called ACQ/PEAK stages. Standard sequences and exposure times are given in the FOS Instrument Handbook (Keyes et al.~1995). The success of a given strategy is difficult to predict a priori for targets other than point sources. This paper describes software that simulates ACQ/PEAK acquisitions in a Monte-Carlo manner, for a variety of targets. The software allows a quantitative assessment to be made of whether an acquisition will succeed, what exposure times should be used, and how the efficiency can be optimized. The full text of this paper is available in PostScript format at: ftp://eku.ias.edu/pub/marel/hstfosacq.uu The software can be downloaded via anonymous FTP from ftp://eku.ias.edu/pub/marel/FOSACQPEAK.uu ================================================================================ Science with the Hubble Space Telescope - II -------------------------------------------- by Ethan Schreier and F. Duccio Macchetto A Scientific Conference co-organized by the ST ScI and ST-ECF Paris (UNESCO Buildings) December 4-8, 1995 During the two years following the Maintenance & Refurbishment Mission which restored the full capabilities of HST, this orbiting Observatory has produced very impressive scientific results, many of which have opened new insights into our understanding of the Universe. The aim of this Conference is to present and discuss these results in all areas of astronomy. It will consist mainly of invited reviews. A limited number of contributed papers and posters will be possible. The program will include reviews of future HST Instruments, plans for future maintenance missions, and a Special Session on "Education and HST." The Scientific Organizing Committee consists of P. Benvenuti, J. Bergeron, R. Fosbury, H. Hammel, R. Kirshner, R. Kudritzki, D. Macchetto, G. Miley, V. Rubin, and E. Schreier. A Second Announcement, including a Registration Form and hotel information, will be distributed in June. The deadline for submission of titles and abstracts for contributed papers and posters will be in September 1995. Please return the information below to Britt Sjoberg at the ST-ECF (bsjoeber@eso.org). ============================================================= Science with the Hubble Space Telescope - II O I intend to participate in the Conference O I intend to submit a Paper/Poster Preliminary Title: O Please include my name in the distribution list ================================================================================ DIGITAL SKY SURVEY ON-LINE -------------------------- The Digital Sky Survey, consisting of the 1950/55 Palomar Observatory Sky Survey red plates for the northern sky and the SERC Southern Sky Survey (including the SERC J Equatorial Extension and some short V-band plates at low galactic latitude) is available on line via the WWW at http://stdatu.stsci.edu/dss/dss_form.html or using StarView by clicking in the "Digitized Sky Survey" button in the Welcome screen. A name resolver is available to find the coordinates of the object of interest. Extractions can be saved in the following image formats: FITS Standard FITS integer format (16 bits per pixel, 2 axes) FITS Unix-compressed FITS, compressed with Unix compress FITS gzip-compressed FITS, compressed with gzip FITS with generic binary mime type FITS, delivered with a MIME type of application/x-fits-binary. Your browser should simply save this format to disk. GIF The retrieved FITS scan will be converted to GIF. If you are using a graphical Web browser (Mosaic, Netscape, etc), you may be able to configure your browser to display the FITS images returned by this form instead of saving them to disk. You can set your browser to recognize these FITS files and start SAOimage to take a quick look of the field. The StarView implementation includes a new version of SAOImage in which the cursor positions are given in RA and dec. This service is intended to occasional, non-time critical users and for small fields. Depending on the load and the size of the field, the access and response time could be very large. Further information can be found in the help files (the "Strategy" button in StarView, for example). For comments, suggestions or if you experience any problems please contact archive@stsci.edu. ================================================================================ RECENT FOS PREPRINTS -------------------- We draw your attention to these papers, based on FOS data, that will appear in the next few months. This list includes all preprints received by the STScI Library not yet published in the journals. Please remember to include our Library in your preprint distribution list. "Quasar Lyman edge regions in polarized light" Koratkar, A.; Antonucci, R.R.J.; Goodrich, R.W.; Bushouse, H.; Kinney, A.L. ApJ 9-10-05 "The incidence of damped Ly alpha systems in the redshift interval 0 < z < 4" Rao, S.M.; Turnshek, D.A.; Briggs, F.H.; ApJ 7-20-95 "Quantitative spectroscopy of HS 1700+6416 with the Hubble Space Telescope" Reimers, D.; Kohler, S.; Hagen, H.-J.; QSO Absorption Lines "The Hubble Space Telescope quasar absorption line key project. V. Redshift evolution of Lyman limit absorption in the spectra of a large sample of quasars" Stengler-Larrea, E.A.; Boksenberg, A.; Steidel, C.C.; Sargent, W.L.W.; Bahcall, J.N.; Bergeron, J.; Hartig, G.F.; Jannuzi, B.T.; Kirhakos, S.; Savage, B.D.; Schneider, D.P.; Turnshek, D.A.; Weymann, R.J. ; ApJ 444: 64-70, 1995 "Simulating ACQ/PEAK target acquisitions with the HST/FOS" Van Der Marel, R.P.; Calibrating HST: Post Servicing Mission "The Hubble Space Telescope sample of radio-loud quasars: I. Ultraviolet spectra of the first 31 quasars" Wills, B.J.; Thompson, K.L.; Han, M.; Netzer, H.; Wills, D.; Baldwin, J.A.; Ferland, G.L.; Browne, I.W.A.; Brotherton, M.S. ================================================================================ APPENDIX: FOS contacts ----------------------- Any questions about the scheduling of your observations should be addressed to your PRESTO contact. If you do not know who this person is, PRESTO's Mosaic page (http://presto.stsci.edu/public/propinfo.html) contains that information. Post-Observation questions should be addressed to the FOS Team, or analysis@stsci.edu (410-338-1082). FOS TEAM -------- Instrument Scientists: Michael Dahlem dahlem@stsci.edu 410-338-4733 Jeffrey Hayes hayes@stsci.edu 410-338-4936 Anuradha Koratkar koratkar@stsci.edu 410-338-4470 Charles D. (Tony) Keyes keyes@stsci.edu 410-338-4975 Group Lead Technical Assistants: Jennifer Christensen christen@stsci.edu 410-338-1265 Stephan Martin smartin@stsci.edu 410-338-4724 http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/instrument_news/FOS/topfos.html ================================================================================ Comments, questions, requests for issues, additions or deletions to the mailing list, etc. can be e-mailed to analysis@stsci.edu ================================================================================ The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555.