Operations / Software Comments - 08/11/05 TIDE Telecon

Operations:
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In order to lower the ion counts near the radiation belts, starting on
07/15/05, the l-shell cutoffs for the radiation belts were changed from
4.0 (np-eq) to 5.0 (eq-sp) and 7.5 (sp-eq) to 7.0 (eq-np) to new values of
6.0 (np-eq) to 6.0 (eq-sp) and 7.5 (sp-eq) to 6.5 (eq-np).

There was a Polar GTM upset on 07/31/05 at 17:40.  Polar was reset at 19:08.
The 'Cmd Received' error flag was set on TIDE but the instrument was ok.
The error flag was cleared at 12:29 on 08/01/05.

The Fall eclipse season begins August 19, 2005 and ends September 10, 2005.
The longest eclipses are 100 minutes.  


Software:
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The new thumbnail summary plot viewer is now available.  There are links from
the TIDE home pages and link bars.  The user enters a time period, species,
and plot type (half-orbit or perigee).  All thumbnails for the time period
are displayed on a single scrollable web page.  Click on the thumbnail to get
access to the larger gif image and the pdf file. 

Work started looking into improving the way the minimum count is subtracted.
Instead of subtracting the minimum count, the average count (with and
without zeroes) for a user-specified number of low energy bins (in the test
case 3 and 6 were used) was subtracted.  Sample velocity distribution and 
moments plots with no subtraction, minimum count subtracted, and average 
count subtracted are in http://satyr.msfc.nasa.gov/tideteam/min_sub/.

The new phase space density versus velocity plots and the enhanced velocity
distribution plots using GSM and GSE coordinates with contour overlays are
now available for testing on the Custom Plot web page.  Note: the PSD vs.
velocity plots are only available for Total Ion (Stops) data.