gsh7w@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Hennessy) (12/09/90)
The telescopes on astro continue on their by now routine observations. The ground control of the telescopes is working well for all telescopes, with the possible exception of WUPPE. The WUPPE telescope is working fine physically, but WUPPE has the smallest field of view and is the most compilcated instrument. The latter means that many more commands must be sent for its operation, and this takes time, which cuts down the amount of observing time possible. The WUPPE team attempted four observations as primary, HD25443, L2PUP, Zeta Tau, and Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuse). Only the observations of Zeta Tau and L2PUP were sucessful. WUPPE did obtain data when HUT or UIT were primary instruments, on NGC891 and NGC1068, large galaxies,and IC63 a supernova remnant, all large objects that WUPPPE had no problem getting in their slit. HUT was primary target on the Sn1987A, NGC4151 (a Seyfert 1 galaxy), IC63, and NGC 1068, a Seyfert 2 galaxy. UIT was very pleased to get lots of deep exposures of these extended objects, and was primary observer on NGC253 and NGC891 both spiral galaxies seen large angles. NGC891 is almost edge on, and is expected to be much like our own galaxy. It is noted for haveing a large halo of hot gas sourrounding it. The biggest problem remaining is the problem with the shuttle getting rid of the waste water. Right now it appears that the mission would have to be cut short to nine days, or even eight, neither circumstance very palatable to the astronomers. There is another water dump later today, and it appears that the mission will be either 11 days with a sucessful water dump, or 9 days with an unsucessful water dump. More details will be made available when I get them. Listening on the loop gives a new rumor every 10 minutes. The current chart of observing time is: 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 12 397 200 50 13 350 181 51 These figures count only time obtained by the primary UV instrument. For example, the WUPPE observation of Betelgeuse was scheduled for 31 minutes, and since WUPPE obtained no data it was counted as zero observing time, even thought HUT got 31 minutes on this object. Likewise teh observation of L2PUP had WUUPE as primary getting 6 minutes, whle HUT and UIT each got about 25 minutes of data. For the shift, HUT got 67 percent of its data, and UIT got 66 percent. It would be hard to get much more then this. BBXRT is controlled from Goddard Space Flight Center and I don't know its values. -- -Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA Internet: gsh7w@virginia.edu UUCP: ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w