LWS/SDO-1 Workshop: May 1 - 5, 2011 in Squaw Creek, CA

The first LWS/SDO first science workshop will be held May 1-5, 2011 at the Resort at Squaw Creek, near Lake Tahoe, CA (http://www.squawcreek.com/). The meeting theme will address science questions that are fundamental to all three of SDO's science investigations (AIA, EVE & HMI).

All members of the science community are welcome and encouraged to attend. Additional information, including registration and housing, can be found at  http://lws-sdo-workshops.org.

SDO Weekly Report for November 19, 2010

Based on discussions with the science teams, it was decided to use the new offset procedure for future Lunar Transit operations to minimize instrument off-pointing during the transitions from Science to Inertial mode and back.

Obtained agreement from the HPA vendor to replace all DC fans with AC fans to improve reliability. The repairs will be done on a rotating cycle to continue operations while units are being repaired.

SDO Weekly Report for November 11, 2010

The second HGA handover season ended on November 1. Operations went smoothly throughout this handover season and another Lunar Transit on 11/6. The data capture completeness for October was 99.94% for all three Instruments. Only rain on DOY 278, a spacecraft station-keeping maneuver on DOY 279, and the HMI Roll calibration on DOY 285 kept us from 100%.

The Inertial/Science mode pointing test was run on Wednesday, 11/10 between 1800 to 1830 UTC. This tested the STOL procedure that redefines the target attitude to minimize the attitude shift between Science and Inertial modes is minimized. This will benefit future Lunar Transit operations.

The "Sun as an Andy Warhol Poster," made from an AIA image, can be seen in the background of an episode of The Big Bang Theory on CBS, with a short clip on Youtube.

The Moon Gets in the Way (again)

Here comes the Moon! Right on schedule the Moon passes between SDO and the Sun, seen here in the AIA 171 bandpass. We use these transits to understand the pointing of the spacecraft. One of these transits will someday block out an active region so that we can study the energy in that region with EVE. Today's transit covered part of the southern hemisphere, which is pretty quiet, and blocked the quietest part of that.

Next lunar transit is December 6 at 0310 UTC.

Images are Flowing Again

Images are flowing from the JSOC to the SDO website again.

Data Unavailable

2010-11-05: The JSOC data pipeline is temporarily down. It will be back up later today.

An AIA FIrst Light image appeared last nite on the CBS show The Big Bang Theory. You can watch the clip at CBS.com.

Here is a screen shot to orient you to the bookcase behind the door. Thanks to Sara and Sarah for taking the pictures and other goodies to the show!

Lunar Transit

There will be a lunar transit tomorrow that will be visible by SDO.
When: 2010-11-05 06:30:11 UT

Visualization of the lunar transit:

SDO Weekly Report for November 4, 2010

The EVE cruciform was delayed for one day and performed on Thursday. Some of the images in Thursday's movies were taken when SDO was pointed away from the Sun so they are missing or have the stripes we saw last week.

The Instrument calibration activities were shifted this week to accommodate the 40-hour continuous observation campaign of the Hinode satellite observation. This was to study the emergence and disappearance of magnetic flux at the Sun’s disk center. EVE reported that there was some improvement in the MEGS-B performance after the previous CCD bakeout but they will return to a 24 hour bakeout during the next eclipse period. The FOT updated the jitter wheel speed limits to 850 rpm from the 380 rpm limit set prior to launch.

Sporadic Data - 2010-11-04

Today, data will be sporadic as a result of the EVE cruciform calibration maneuver. The satellite will swing back & forth and up & down for 8 hours.