Late Breaking News

Verification of Count Dependent Non-linearity ISR Available

A new Instrument Science Report is now available describing the verification of the count dependent non-linearity. The ISR is available at http://www.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/documents/isrs/isr_2007_004.pdf

Improvements to Calnica ISR Available

A new NICMOS Instrument Science Report describing a number of improvements to Calnica is now available. The ISR reports two major
and a number of minor updates to calnica, the STSDAS task that performs routine instrumental calibration of NICMOS raw images.
It can be found on the NICMOS web site at http://www.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/documents/isrs/isr_2008_002.pdf.

Bright Earth Persistence ISR Available

A new NICMOS Instrument Science Report showing the presence of image
persistence in NICMOS data due to prior saturation of
the array by the bright Earth as well as an algorithm to remove its impact, is
now available. It can be found on the NICMOS web site at href="http://www.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/documents/isrs/isr_2008_001.pdf">http://w
ww.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/documents/isrs/isr_2008_001.pdf.

NICMOS Safing and Recovery

The Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) entered safe mode on Saturday, September 1, 2007 at approximately 11:00 PM EDT (Day 245, 02:58 UTC). The safe mode cause was an apparent Analog/Digital FIFO read failure of internal engineering status by the Control Section flight software of the NICMOS main computer. NICMOS flight software is designed to trigger safing upon failure to properly read the status under the assumption that the inability to determine its own state presents a potentially dangerous condition for continued operation.

NICMOS safe mode entry occurred during orbit day outside the South Atlantic Anomaly. The spacecraft was in two-gyro mode following the successful transition from Zero-Gyro Sun-Point safe mode earlier that day. Although the NICMOS safing event occurred during the recovery to science operations from the Gyro #2 failure on August 31, the two events are unrelated. The leading candidate for the cause of the error was a single event upset affecting the special engineering data buffer, a CPU register, or a memory location. The HST Project proceeded accordingly to recover NICMOS from safe mode, with no reoccurrence of the error, on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 at about 1:00 PM EDT (Day 247, 17:10 UTC).

There are no NICMOS science observations planned for the current week (beginning September 2, 2007). Updates on the status of NICMOS instrumentation and NICMOS science observations will be posted as they become available.

Calibration Plans ISR Available

A new NICMOS Instrument Science Report detailing the NICMOS Cycle 15 Calibration Plans is now available. It can be found on the NICMOS web site at http://www.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/documents/isrs/isr_2007_004.pdf.

Time Dependent Flat-fields ISR Available

A new Instrument Science Report is now available describing the creation of time-dependent flat-fields. The ISR is available at http://www.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/documents/isrs/isr_2007_002.pdf. The time dependent flat fields are available at http://www.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/calibration/reffiles/temporal_flat_files/index.html.

NICMOS Focus Update ISR Available

A new Instrument Science Report is now available describing the current focus status of NICMOS. The ISR is available at http://www.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/documents/isrs/isr_2007_003.pdf

New SAAclean ISR Available

A new Instrument Science Report is now available for the new SAAclean PyRAF task, available as part of STSDAS. SAAclean removes the persistence from cosmic rays encountered during a passage through the South Atlantic Anomaly. The ISR is available at http://www.stsci.edu/hst/nicmos/documents/isrs/isr_2007_001.pdf

The NICMOS team encourages SAAclean users to submit any feedback on the task to the STScI Help Desk at help@stsci.edu.