NASA Hubble Space Telescope Daily Report #5133

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE DAILY REPORT #5133

Continuing to Collect World Class Science

PERIOD COVERED: 5am July 7 – 5am July 8, 2010 (DOY 188/09:00z-189/09:00z)

FLIGHT OPERATIONS SUMMARY:

Significant Spacecraft Anomalies: (The following are preliminary reports of potential non-nominal performance that will be investigated.)

HSTARS: (None)

COMPLETED OPS REQUEST: (None)

COMPLETED OPS NOTES: (None)

                       SCHEDULED SUCCESSFUL

FGS GSAcq               5               5

FGS REAcq               9               9

OBAD with Maneuver      4               4

SIGNIFICANT EVENTS: (None)

OBSERVATIONS SCHEDULED:

ACS/WFC 11996

CCD Daily Monitor (Part 3)

This program comprises basic tests for measuring the read noise and dark current of the ACS WFC and for tracking the growth of hot pixels. The recorded frames are used to create bias and dark reference images for science data reduction and calibration. This program will be executed four days per week (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun) for the duration of Cycle 17. To facilitate scheduling, this program is split into three proposals. This proposal covers 308 orbits (19.25 weeks) from 21 June 2010 to 1 November 2010.

COS/FUV 11686

The Cosmological Impact of AGN Outflows: Measuring Absolute Abundances and Kinetic Luminosities

AGN outflows are increasingly invoked as a major contributor to the formation and evolution of supermassive black holes, their host galaxies, the surrounding IGM, and cluster cooling flows. Our HST/COS proposal will determine reliable absolute chemical abundances in six AGN outflows, which influences several of the processes mentioned above. To date there is only one such determination, done by our team on Mrk 279 using 16 HST/STIS orbits and 100 ksec of FUSE time. The advent of COS and its high sensitivity allows us to choose among fainter objects at redshifts high enough to preclude the need for FUSE. This will allow us to determine the absolute abundances for six AGN (all fainter than Mrk 279) using only 40 HST COS orbits. This will put abundances studies in AGN on a firm footing, an elusive goal for the past four decades. In addition, prior FUSE observations of four of these targets indicate that it is probable that the COS observations will detect troughs from excited levels of C III. These will allow us to measure the distances of the outflows and thereby determine their kinetic luminosity, a major goal in AGN feedback research.

We will use our state of the art column density extraction methods and velocity-dependent photoionization models to determine the abundances and kinetic luminosity. Previous AGN outflow projects suffered from the constraints of deciding what science we could do using ONE of the handful of bright targets that were observable. With COS we can choose the best sample for our experiment. As an added bonus, most of the spectral range of our targets has not been observed previously, greatly increasing the discovery phase space.

COS/NUV/ACS/WFC/FUV 11658

Probing the Outer Regions of M31 with QSO Absorption Lines

We propose HST-COS spectroscopy of 10 quasars behind M31. Absorption lines due to MgII, FeII, CIV, and a variety of other lines will be searched for and measured. Six quasars lie between 1 and 4.2 Holmberg radii near the major axis on the southwest side, where confusion with Milky Way gas is minimized. Two lie even farther out on the southwest side of the major axis. One lies within 1 Holmberg radius. Two of the 10 pass through M31’s high velocity clouds seen in a detailed 21 cm emission map. Exposure time estimates were based on SDSS magnitudes and available GALEX magnitudes. Thus, using the most well-studied external spiral galaxy in the sky, our observations will permit us to check, better than ever before, the standard picture that quasar metal-line absorption systems such as MgII and CIV arise in an extended gaseous halo/disk of a galaxy well beyond its observable optical radius. The observations will yield insights into the nature of the gas and its connection to the very extended stellar components of M31 that have recently been studied. Notably the observations have the potential of extending M31’s rotation curve to very large galactocentric distances, thereby placing new constraints on M31’s dark matter halo.

Finally, we also request that the coordinated parallel orbits be allocated to this program so that we may image the resolved stellar content of M31’s halo and outer disk.

STIS/CC 11845

CCD Dark Monitor Part 2

Monitor the darks for the STIS CCD.

STIS/CC 11847

CCD Bias Monitor-Part 2

Monitor the bias in the 1×1, 1×2, 2×1, and 2×2 bin settings at gain=1, and 1×1 at gain = 4, to build up high-S/N superbiases and track the evolution of hot columns.

WFC3/IR/S/C 11929

IR Dark Current Monitor

Analyses of ground test data showed that dark current signals are more reliably removed from science data using darks taken with the same exposure sequences as the science data, than with a single dark current image scaled by desired exposure time. Therefore, dark current images must be collected using all sample sequences that will be used in science observations. These observations will be used to monitor changes in the dark current of the WFC3-IR channel on a day-to-day basis, and to build calibration dark current ramps for each of the sample sequences to be used by Gos in Cycle 17. For each sample sequence/array size combination, a median ramp will be created and delivered to the calibration database system (CDBS).

WFC3/UV/ACS/WFC 11710

The Extreme Globular Cluster System of Abell 1689: The Ultimate Test of Universal Formation Efficiency

The stellar masses of the most luminous galaxies poorly represent the masses of the halos in which they reside. However, recent studies of the very rich globular cluster (GC) populations in the centers of galaxy clusters point toward an apparently linear scaling of the number of GCs with the total core mass of the galaxy cluster. Thus, unlike for the stars in cD galaxies, GC formation in these systems appears to have proceeded with a roughly universal mass conversion efficiency. GCs are also distinct in that their spatial distributions are more extended than the starlight, and recent simulations suggest that they follow the mass density profile of the merged dark matter halos that formed stars at high redshift. To provide a definitive test of the universal efficiency hypothesis requires measuring the number of GCs in the most massive galaxy clusters, where the number should be a factor of 5 or more greater than seen in M87. Likewise, the relationship between GCs and mass density can only be tested in systems where the total mass and mass density are well-determined. Fortunately, the imaging power of HST brings the GC population of Abell 1689, the most extreme high-mass lensing cluster, into range. Estimates of the size of the A1689 GC population from available data suggest an unprecedented 100, 000 GCs, but this number is based on the tip of the iceberg and is extremely uncertain. We propose to obtain the first accurate measurement of the number of GCs and their density profile in this extraordinary system – the most massive and most distant GC system ever studied – and thus make the ultimate test of the universal GC formation hypothesis. Our deep I-band image will also provide a stringent “null-detection” test of several known z>7 galaxy candidates and improve the mass model of the system by increasing the number of usable lensed background galaxies. Finally, we will take deep multi-band parallel observations with WFC3/IR to help in quantifying the abundance of rare faint red objects.

WFC3/UVIS 11905

WFC3 UVIS CCD Daily Monitor

The behavior of the WFC3 UVIS CCD will be monitored daily with a set of full-frame, four-amp bias and dark frames. A smaller set of 2Kx4K subarray biases are acquired at less frequent intervals throughout the cycle to support subarray science observations. The internals from this proposal, along with those from the anneal procedure (Proposal 11909), will be used to generate the necessary superbias and superdark reference files for the calibration pipeline (CDBS).

WFC3/UVIS 11908

Cycle 17: UVIS Bowtie Monitor

Ground testing revealed an intermittent hysteresis type effect in the UVIS detector (both CCDs) at the level of ~1%, lasting hours to days. Initially found via an unexpected bowtie-shaped feature in flatfield ratios, subsequent lab tests on similar e2v devices have since shown that it is also present as simply an overall offset across the entire CCD, i.e., a QE offset without any discernable pattern. These lab tests have further revealed that overexposing the detector to count levels several times full well fills the traps and effectively neutralizes the bowtie. Each visit in this proposal acquires a set of three 3×3 binned internal flatfields: the first unsaturated image will be used to detect any bowtie, the second, highly exposed image will neutralize the bowtie if it is present, and the final image will allow for verification that the bowtie is gone.