Simulating ACQ/PEAK target acquisitions with the HST/FOS
Abstract
Description
A common target acquisition strategy with the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is to use a sequence of so-called ACQ/PEAK stages. Standard sequences and exposure times are given in the FOS Instrument Handbook (Keyes et al.~1995). The success of a given strategy is difficult to predict a priori for targets other than point sources. This paper describes software that simulates ACQ/PEAK acquisitions in a Monte-Carlo manner, for a variety of targets. The software is available from the FOS Instrument Scientists or from the author. It allows a proper quantitative assessment to be made of whether an acquisition will succeed, what exposure times should be used, and how the efficiency can be optimized.
10 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScript, without Fig.1. Complete version at ftp://eku.ias.edu/pub/marel/hstfosacq.uu; To appear in the proceedings of the STScI Workshop: `Calibrating HST: Post Servicing Mission'
10 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScript, without Fig.1. Complete version at ftp://eku.ias.edu/pub/marel/hstfosacq.uu; To appear in the proceedings of the STScI Workshop: `Calibrating HST: Post Servicing Mission'