Operations / Software Comments - 05/27/04 TIDE Telecon

Operations:
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TIDE operations have been nominal.  No problems encountered this past month.
The last GTM upset / TIDE reset was April 3-4, 2004.


Software:
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Release of tide_lz_v5.8.0:

The software includes new options to:
- correct the mask subtraction
- correct spacecraft potential offset
- estimate the polar angle distribution in the Stops data and use it to 
  restrict moments calculations.
- restrict spin angle range used in moments calculation to a range centered 
  around the b-field, the user specifies the width of the range in degrees and 
  whether it applies to positive B, negative B, or both.

The production (summary plot) software has been using the new version for a 
about a month.  The tar file for the IDL version of the code is available on 
the web at http://satyr.msfc.nasa.gov/TIDE/software/.  With the exception of 
peaks on the GSFC web site, the web sites now use tide_lz_v5.8.0.


Macintosh versions of the TIDE processing software:

The latest version of the Mac software is tide_lz_v5.5.0.  Dick West is looking
into creating a non-OS10 version of tide_lz_v5.8.0 and an OS10 version.


Data Dump option from the web:

Dick West has set up a web-interface to dump varies types of TIDE data.  It will
eventually be available from the web main page.  It is currently available for 
testing at http://tide.gsfc.nasa.gov/data_dumps.shtml.  The data dumps are text
files containing specific information.  The dumps currently available include:

  engineering/housekeeping data
  instrument parameters
  b-field data
  spin header data
  major frame byte dump
  raw counts
  counts / flux data dump


Velocity Distribution contours:

Work has started on the option to contour velocity distribution phase space
density data.