ACIS Thermal Control and Observing Strategies
Abstract
Nearing its 13th observing cycle, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory continues to deliver excellent science to the High Energy community. The orbit of Chandra, and thermal conditions of the spacecraft and instruments have changed over time which has necessitated changes in observing strategies; particularly for the ACIS instrument.
This poster focuses on expected changes to be implemented in Cycle 13 for observing with the ACIS instrument. We will focus on the thermal issues with ACIS, including warming of the PSMC, DEA, and Focal Plane. We discuss the causes of the warming of these components of ACIS based on past data, and how this warming can affect observations. Trending studies have strongly suggested changes to the future observing strategies for ACIS. We discuss these changes which include reducing the number of CCDs powered on for temperature sensitive observations, implementing an ACIS FP temperature model to predict temperatures based on spacecraft pitch and pointing, and the use of optional CCDs to reduce the number of CCDs during the planning of a particular week.- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #218
- Pub Date:
- May 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AAS...21822825A