Session Notes for rd1704 Prepared by K. Le Bail, NVI, Inc./GSFC =========================================================== PURPOSE AND GENERAL NOTES =========================================================== GAIA proposal The Laboratory d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux (LAB) subnmitted in 2012 a proposal to observe 195 ICRF2 transfer sources in the context of the GAIA mission. These sources were added to the GSFC monitoring program and 37 sources were scheduled in Gaia-dedicated R&D sessions. In February 2017, we studied the position uncertainties and the observation frequency of the 195 sources of the LAB proposal. Twenty-seven of these sources have a bad observation frequency: they were observed successfully in less than five sessions a year while the LAB requirement was twelve sessions a year. Most of these sources have bad uncertainties compared to the other sources of the set (larger than 50 microas). Three additional sources have good position uncertainties and an observation frequency of five to eleven successful sessions a year. However they are sources that were observed in previous Gaia-dedicated R&D sessions and the concern is that if they are not scheduled in coming dedicated R&D sessions, their observation frequency may drop. The sources scheduled in the Gaia-dedicated R&D sessions scheduled to observe after March 1st, 2017 are these thirty sources. When compared to the previous categories determined by the LAB, one source was in category 1, five sources were in category 2, five sources were in category 3 and nineteen sources were in category 4. In RD1704, we schedule these thirty sources in the astro mode of sked. We used a maxscan value of 600 seconds. Forty of the good geodetic sources are used as base of a stable sources set and uniform sky coverage. We use the sked flux catalog for all sources. Wettzell will observe INT Q17088 during the time from 1815 UT to 1945 UT. NyAlesund is tagged along as of March 22, 2017, it may not be able to observe on March 29, 2017. The command FILL was used on all stations and on the entire period with a fill_off (buffer offset) of 5 seconds. ----- Parameter listing -------------------------------------- Experiment: RD1704 Description R&D-03/2017 Scheduler: NASA Correlator: SHAO Start: 2017-088-18:00:00 End: 2017-089-18:00:00 Current yyyyddd: 2017088 (2017.24) ( 17842 MJD, WED. 29MAR.) Greenwich sidereal time: 06:29:18 (18:00:00 UT) Sun's RA and DEC: 0h 33.9m 3d 39.6 =========================================================== First observations Observation listing from file ./rd1704.skd for experiment RD1704 Source Start DURATIONS name yyddd-hhmmss Hh Ho Mc T6 Wz Ny 1219+044 17088-180000| 600 600 600 600 600 600| 0827+243 17088-181328| 56 45 96 163 163| 0552+398 17088-181704| 40 473 473| 1124-186 17088-181729| 253 253 | 1349-439 17088-182340| 496 496 122 | End of listing. =========================================================== Observation listing from file ./rd1704.skd for experiment RD1704 Source Start DURATIONS name yyddd-hhmmss Hh Ho Mc T6 Wz Ny 1348+308 17089-173102| 600 600 600 600| 1215+303 17089-174148| 194 229 325 325| 1057-797 17089-174503| 40 40 | 0410+110 17089-174848| 595 485 595| 1333-337 17089-174849| 595 595 236 | 1908+484 17089-175749| 126 126 | End of listing. =========================================================== SKED Summary from file ./rd1704.skd for experiment RD1704 (all scans with at least one subnet station) Average number of obs. per baseline per source(normalized by up-time) = 5.1 Min = 0.0 Max = 37.6 (Baseline Hh-Wz on 1255-316) RMS = 7.1 Total time: 1440 minutes ( 24.0 hours). Key: Hh=HARTRAO Ho=HOBART26 Mc=MEDICINA T6=TIANMA65 Wz=WETTZELL Ny=NYALES20 Hh Ho Mc T6 Wz Ny Avg % obs. time: 46 45 60 44 60 64 53 % cal. time: 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 % slew time: 27 23 23 44 6 9 22 % idle time: 24 30 13 8 31 25 22 total # scans: 133 165 187 224 170 147 171 # scans/hour : 6 7 8 9 7 6 7 Avg scan (sec): 299 234 278 169 306 377 276 # data tracks: 32 32 32 32 32 32 # Mk5 tracks: 32 32 32 32 32 32 Total TB(M5): 2.5 2.5 3.3 2.4 3.3 3.5 2.9 # OF OBSERVATIONS BY BASELINE | Hh Ho Mc T6 Wz Ny Total ---------------------------------------- Hh| 56 75 57 54 44 286 Ho| 10 138 17 22 243 Mc| 75 147 127 434 T6| 64 78 412 Wz| 118 400 Ny| 389 Number of 2-station scans: 155 Number of 3-station scans: 120 Number of 4-station scans: 77 Number of 5-station scans: 6 Number of 6-station scans: 3 Total number of scans: 361 Total number of obs: 1082 Total integrated obs-time: 296720 Average obs-time: 274.2 Histogram of observation durations Dur: 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300 330 360 390 420 450 480 510 540 570 600 #Obs: | 162| 93| 80| 92| 65| 87| 43| 42| 20| 36| 18| 19| 22| 15| 20| 7| 5| 16| 240 Average X-band SNRs by baseline | Hh Ho Mc T6 Wz Ny AVG --------------------------------------- Hh| 28 40 73 61 35 47 Ho| 21 72 28 19 52 Mc| 105 90 54 72 T6| 140 98 94 Wz| 77 88 Ny| 66 Average S-band SNRs by baseline | Hh Ho Mc T6 Wz Ny AVG --------------------------------------- Hh| 34 26 50 35 22 33 Ho| 22 59 23 14 45 Mc| 50 37 27 34 T6| 63 44 54 Wz| 36 40 Ny| 32 =========================================================== Recording mode Name Code GEOSX8N 8F Recording mode for: HARTRAO HOBART26 MEDICINA NYALES20 TIANMA65 WETTZELL Mode Tot.Rate Tot.BandW #BBC #bits Barrel Mk341:1 512 Mbits 128 MHz 14 2 NONE Chan.BW #Subpasses Tracks(*fan) Tot.tracks 8.00 MHz 1 32(*1) 32 X-band spanned bw= 720.0 MHz rms spanned bw= 280.4 MHz S-band spanned bw= 140.0 MHz rms spanned bw= 50.9 MHz Effective number of 1-bit channels recorded per sub-pass X S Total 19.13 11.48 30.61 =========================================================== Tape types ID Station Tape length Density Passes Hh HARTRAO Mark5B Ho HOBART26 Mark5A Mc MEDICINA Mark5B Ny NYALES20 Mark5B T6 TIANMA65 Mark5B Wz WETTZELL Mark5B =========================================================== SNR targets Minimum SNR by baseline for multi-baseline scans X-band (margin 0) S-band (margin 0) X-band (ast_margin 0) S-band (ast_margin 0) Hh Ho Mc T6 Wz Hh Ho Mc T6 Wz Ho 20 Ho 15 Mc 20 20 Mc 15 15 T6 20 20 20 T6 15 15 15 Wz 20 20 20 20 Wz 15 15 15 15 Ny 20 20 20 20 20 Ny 15 15 15 15 15 ===========================================================