gsh7w@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Hennessy) (12/08/90)
The UV instruments on the ASTRO observatory are again taking data. Shift 10 had essentially no science done with the three UV instruments, while the BBXT continue to take data. While the first two orbits of Shift 11 did not have any sucessful acquisitions, UIT obtained three deep exposures of NGC 1399, and WUPPE and HUT also got data on this galaxy. Later HUT was able to obtain lots of data on the quasar Q1821, and two orbits later WUPPE wa sback in business by itself as it obtained the star Gamma Gem on its own. The astronauts are tracking the stars by using a joystick, and they have about 5 arcsecons of jitter, which is acceptable to HUT and WUPPE (they have large slits) and the Image Motion Compensator is working to keep UIT stable to about a tenth of an arcsecond. The philosophy of the misssion has changed a bit, to get longer observations of fewer targets, since the overhead per observation is greater than expected. This makes UIT very happy, since they get nice deep exposures to work with. Here is a breakdown of the shift number, observing time scheduled, and acutally obtained, times in minutes. Shift Scheduled Obtained Percentage Notes 6 345 54 17 7 418 163 38 Startracker patched 8 429 189 44 9 428 247 57 10 36 8 4 2nd DDU died 11 343 187 55 The prelaunch expectations were that about 80 percent of the time scheduled would be observed, so while we are not there yet, we are gettin gcloser. There may be a 11'th day of the mission, which would allow us to recover some of the lost time due to the problems with spacelab. -- -Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA Internet: gsh7w@virginia.edu UUCP: ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w