RHESSI Tohban report, 5-nov-2002 to 11-nov-2002 A. Caspi, cepheid@ssl.berkeley.edu 1. Solar Activity: The Sun was relatively quiet for much of the week, and there was a period of about 2 days when activity was *extremely* low, allowing us to work with the shutters out for long periods. There were only 2 M-class flares before Monday, and 63 C-class flares (17 above C5, 6 above C7). Fortunately, RHESSI managed to catch the entire rise phase of the M4.6 flare on 9 Nov 2002 (15-minute rise period, 28-minute duration), and the entire M2.4 flare on 10 Nov 2002 (17-minute rise period, 31-minute duration). Shutters were in 1-3 mode during both flares. 2. Coordinated obervations: None that we knew about. 3. Memory Managment: Due to the long period of very low solar activity, we were able to operate with open shutters for quite a while during the week. One of the open-shutter periods lasted about 32 hours, amazingly. For "safer" management during Berkeley nights, we left the spacecraft in 1-3 mode but with shutters open, to allow the most data capture with the least danger of filling up the memory in case of a large flare (which we unfortunately never got). For the detail-minded, an excerpt of the shutter log is below: A013 -> A13 3-nov-2002 ~22:30 (enabled but not closed) 4-nov-2002 ~03:30 (thin shutter closed automatically) A13 -> A013 7-nov-2002 03:38:47 A013 -> A13 8-nov-2002 03:43:32 (enabled but not closed) 8-nov-2002 ~12:30 (thin shutter closed automatically) A13 (still) 9-nov-2002 02:06:30 (thin shutter pulled OUT manually) 9-nov-2002 ~09:45 (thin shutter closed automatically) A13 -> A013 11-nov-2002 00:32:48 A013 -> A13 11-nov-2002 19:30:20 4. Intentional Data Gaps: None that the Tohban was informed of. 5. SSR management There was a conference call on 8 Nov 2002 to discuss the implementation of the new decimation table; participants were Bob Lin, Mark Lewis, David Smith, Richard Schwartz, and Brian Dennis. Concern was expressed over a possible problem in imaging and spectra if the enery range includes a decimation boundary, but Richard was confident that it should not be a major issue. Agreement was reached that David's decimation table should be implemented ASAP, though it could not be done this week due to the absence of Peter Harvey. 6. Problems Everything seemed to work smoothly this week... the web pages seemed to be getting updated properly and there were no major issues with the spacecraft or the ground station, as far as the Tohban was informed. 7. Tohbans Week of 12-Nov to 18-Nov: Satoshi Masuda Amir Caspi will be working on a way to store updates of the Spacecraft Status page (dump from ITOS) so that tohbans (and anyone else) will be able to get direct ITOS data online without needing the "state of health" plots (which are often hard to read and which are always delayed by at least 30 minutes). There are a few issues that need to be worked out on how this is done - the best answer would be to get a cron job that runs off the transmitter "on times" for BGS, and this is a bit tricky to implement in practice (if it's at all possible). More info on this will be coming later. Amir will also be working on revising the Tohban web pages, to improve clarity and organization. This should help not only the people viewing the website for information, but also the tohbans in updating and maintaining the existing files.