Session Notes for rd1801 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 RD1801, we could schedule twenty-five out of the 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 source set and uniform sky coverage. We use the sked flux catalog for all sources. Wettzell and Kokee will observe INT I18010 during the time from 1815 UT to 1945 UT. The command FILL was used on all stations and on the entire period with a fill_off (buffer offset) of 10 seconds. =========================================================== ----- Parameter listing -------------------------------------- Experiment: RD1801 Description R&D-01/2018 Scheduler: NASA Correlator: SHAO Start: 2018-010-18:00:00 End: 2018-011-18:00:00 Current yyyyddd: 2018010 (2018.03) ( 18129 MJD, WED. 10JAN.) Greenwich sidereal time: 01:20:50 (18:00:00 UT) Sun's RA and DEC: 19h 28.5m -21d 52.8 =========================================================== First observations Observation listing from file ./rd1801.skd for experiment RD1801 Source Start DURATIONS name yyddd-hhmmss Hh Ho Kk Km Mc Ny Wz 0308-611 18010-180000| 85 85 | 1803+784 18010-180000| 108 40 49 87 108| 0805+410 18010-180254| 166 81 46 151 166| 0202+319 18010-180648| 79 40 40 78 79| 0119+041 18010-180853| 40 40| 1215+303 18010-180954| 444 600 145 600 | 2209+236 18010-181125| 40 40| 2356+385 18010-181325| 270 270| 0823-223 18010-181425| 40 40 | End of listing. =========================================================== Observation listing from file ./rd1801.skd for experiment RD1801 Source Start DURATIONS name yyddd-hhmmss Hh Ho Kk Km Mc Ny Wz 1143-332 18011-173107| 600 600 551 | 0544+273 18011-173651| 224 272 306 306| 1349-439 18011-174229| 339 339 | 0410+110 18011-174246| 349 401 401 347 353| 2145+082 18011-174946| 463 463| 0528-250 18011-175124| 313 385 385 348 | 0420+022 18011-175852| 58 58 58 58 58| End of listing. =========================================================== SKED Summary from file ./rd1801.skd for experiment RD1801 (all scans with at least one subnet station) Average number of obs. per baseline per source(normalized by up-time) = 4.2 Min = 0.0 Max = 40.8 (Baseline Hh-Ho on 0410+110) RMS = 7.0 Total time: 1440 minutes ( 24.0 hours). Key: Hh=HARTRAO Ho=HOBART26 Kk=KOKEE Km=KUNMING Mc=MEDICINA Ny=NYALES20 Wz=WETTZELL Hh Ho Kk Km Mc Ny Wz Avg % obs. time: 47 63 57 71 60 69 72 63 % cal. time: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 % slew time: 27 21 7 21 26 9 6 17 % idle time: 23 13 34 5 11 19 19 18 total # scans: 135 145 134 186 181 160 183 160 # scans/hour : 6 6 6 8 8 7 8 7 Avg scan (sec): 302 375 366 330 286 374 338 338 # data tracks: 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 # Mk5 tracks: 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 Total TB(M5): 2.61 3.48 3.14 3.93 3.31 3.83 3.96 3.46 # OF OBSERVATIONS BY BASELINE | Hh Ho Kk Km Mc Ny Wz Total --------------------------------------------- Hh| 48 0 61 71 37 71 288 Ho| 85 82 15 16 11 257 Kk| 75 26 38 20 244 Km| 53 63 69 403 Mc| 123 140 428 Ny| 115 392 Wz| 426 Number of 2-station scans: 152 Number of 3-station scans: 161 Number of 4-station scans: 54 Number of 5-station scans: 17 Number of 6-station scans: 6 Number of 7-station scans: 0 Total number of scans: 390 Total number of obs: 1219 Total integrated obs-time: 379227 Average obs-time: 311.1 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: | 207| 83| 57| 50| 34| 50| 63| 29| 30| 42| 55| 40| 51| 51| 24| 29| 39| 34| 251 Average X-band SNRs by baseline | Hh Ho Kk Km Mc Ny Wz AVG -------------------------------------------- Hh| 37 - 51 36 37 49 43 Ho| 27 38 24 26 29 32 Kk| 35 41 55 71 39 Km| 59 58 82 53 Mc| 56 69 56 Ny| 81 61 Wz| 70 Average S-band SNRs by baseline | Hh Ho Kk Km Mc Ny Wz AVG -------------------------------------------- Hh| 29 - 28 22 22 22 24 Ho| 27 27 20 17 19 26 Kk| 40 29 39 45 34 Km| 35 33 37 33 Mc| 23 27 26 Ny| 31 28 Wz| 29 =========================================================== Recording mode Name Code GEOSX8N 8F Recording mode for: HARTRAO HOBART26 KOKEE KUNMING MEDICINA NYALES20 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 Mark5B Kk KOKEE Mark5B Km KUNMING Mark5B Mc MEDICINA Mark5B Ny NYALES20 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 Kk Km Mc Ny Hh Ho Kk Km Mc Ny Ho 20 Ho 15 Kk 20 20 Kk 15 15 Km 20 20 20 Km 15 15 15 Mc 20 20 20 20 Mc 15 15 15 15 Ny 20 20 20 20 20 Ny 15 15 15 15 15 Wz 20 20 20 20 20 20 Wz 15 15 15 15 15 15 ===========================================================