Thursday, May 26, 2011

AIA Cadence Change and Guide Telescope

A guide telescope PZT calibration was executed today.

The AIA 304 channel is showing some loss of sensitivity. We will be running that channel at a slower cadence (1 image in 304 per minute) rather than every 12 seconds as we have been doing. This will be tested today (5/27) and run for several months starting 5/30. The 94 channel that shares the telescope and CCD with the 304 channel does not show the same loss, so it will be run more frequently (1 304 image per minute and 4 94 images per minute).

"Solar Dynamics Observatory Lessons Affirmed," an article discussing some of the engineering lessons learned during the building of SDO appeared in ask Magazine, a publication that discusses project management and engineering at NASA. The article was written by Brent Robertson, last seen being the observatory manager for SDO, and Michael Bay, a member of the award-winning SDO Systems Engineering team.