Thursday, April 19, 2012

Maneuvers and Images

Last Wednesday and yesterday (April 11 and 18, 2012) we performed several spacecraft maneuvers to help calibrate our instruments. On April 4 we did an EVE cruciform and an AIA bakeout. This means the Sun moves back and forth and up and down. AIA images may be noisy (because the CCDs were warmed up to reduce contamination) and the Sun absent during this maneuver. HMI images may not show the Sun, or show it whizzing by as SDO moves.

On April 18 SDO did an EVE field of view and HMI flatfield maneuver.

While we do these maneuvers the data may be unavailable but by doing these maneuvers we keep the instruments healthy.