_              
                                              |_|             
  V   V   SSSS   OOO   PPPP          \__      |_|      __/    
  V   V  S      O   O  P   P            --____/ \____--       
  V   V   SSS   O   O  PPPP             _ _ _ --- _ _ _       
   V V       S  O   O  P               |_|_|_|  @|_|_|_|      
    V    SSSS    OOO   P                      o-o             
                                             /                
  ***  N    E    W    S  ***               <)                 

ECLIPSES

The second series of eclipses, in which sunlight irradiating HALCA's solar paddles is blocked by the Earth, commenced two weeks ago. The first series of eclipses, which took place in April, occurred while the satellite was near apogee, and so although the series of eclipses lasted only a little over a month, the length of the individual eclipses grew quickly to the maximum value of just over 90 minutes. In contrast, eclipses in the current series will not be as long individually, but the series will continue until July 1998. In-Orbit Checkout (IOC) activities were suspended for much of the first series of eclipses while thermal modelling of satellite was refined but the current series of eclipses is not expected to have any significant impact on observing.

CONTACT WITH PIs

Although the In-Orbit Checkout phase of the mission is still on-going, observations with General Observing Time codes are slowly being incorporated in the observing schedule. These are still early days, however, and the long term observing schedule is still subject to revisions, cancellations and alterations, and so it has not been possible to give PIs the nominal four-to- six weeks notice that their observation will be made. The provisional schedule for the next month or so can be viewed on the VSOP WWW site, and once the long-term schedule has become (more) fixed PIs will be contacted individually before an observation of theirs is undertaken. More details will follow in the next week or so.

OPERATIONS MEETING

A two-day meeting between VSOP Science Operations Group members and represent- atives of the tracking stations, correlators and other mission elements was held on Thursday 31 July and Friday 1 August in Oxnard, California. The meeting reviewed the progress made so far during the IOC and focused on the goals and problems of all aspects of the mission, from scheduling to recording to correlating to imaging and calibrating -- a productive meeting!

ISAS OPEN DAY

The annual ISAS open day was held on Saturday 27th July. The VSOP team was given `prime real estate' for their displays: immediately inside the front foyer of the main building. Attendance at the open day was down on previous years due to the overcast and rainy conditions, but was still around 10,000.

CONGRATULATIONS...

...to all those involved with the successful detection of first fringes on the EVN MkIV data processor at JIVE! For more details see the JIVE WWW page http://www.nfra.nl/jive/correlator/first.html

 
       Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi