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INTEGRAL Latest NewsBack in business
01 February 2012 Since yesterday, 31 January at UT 18:04 all instruments have been reactivated and operations continue normally. INTEGRAL instruments affected again by another solar flare
30 January 2012 Following a further solar flare on Friday 27 January evening INTEGRAL operations have again been effected. The IBIS, JEM-X and OMC instruments were in safe mode from about UT 19:00 for the rest of revolution 1134. Following perigee yesterday, 29 January, the background levels had decreased sufficiently to allow IBIS to be reactivated again. SPI was unaffected by the flare and could continue to operate nominally. All instruments working again
27 January 2012 With receding levels of high background radiation, all instruments have been activated again. IBIS was re-activated on 25 January at 09:40Z, OMC on 26 January at 19:12Z and JEM-X at 23:03Z the same day.
Strongest solar storm since May 2005
24 January 2012 The IBIS, JEM-X and OMC instruments are in safe mode due to excessively high radiation conditions following a M8.7 class solar flare that occurred during the perigee passage between revolution 1132 and 1133, on Sunday January 22 at around 5:00 CET. SPI is operational and the star tracker seems to be functioning nominally. As soon as the radiation level drops sufficiently, the instruments will be re-activated. This is likely be at the end of 1133 or at the start of 1134. Further reading about the eruption: http://www.space.com/14319-huge-solar-eruption-sparks-radiation-storm.html. 
ToO observations of GX 304-1 17 January 2012 Today, INTEGRAL began a series of Target of Opportunity observations on the Be-/X-ray binary GX 304-1, which was caught in a new recurrent outburst by MAXI (ATel #3856). The source will be closely followed over the next revolutions. Please consult the scheduling pages for more information.
Upcoming call for AO-10 16 January 2012 ISOC is preparing the next call for proposals requesting INTEGRAL observing time. The AO-10 release will be on 12 March 2012, deadline 20 April 2012. The subsequent call for proposals requesting data rights will be released September 2012. The AO-10 cycle of observations will begin on 01 January 2013 and has a duration of 12 months. | Release of AO-10: call for observing time proposals: | | 12 March 2012 | | Deadline for submission of observing time proposals: | | 20 April 2012 (14:00 local time, Madrid) | | Meeting of the Time Allocation Committee: | | June 2012 | | Release of AO-10: call for data rights proposals: | | 3 September 2012 | | Deadline for submission of data rights proposals: | | 28 September 2012 (14:00 local time, Madrid) | | Meeting of the Time Allocation Committee: | | November 2012 | | Start of AO-10 cycle of observations: | | 1 January 2013 | Planning constraints in revolutions 1132 and 1133
16 January 2012 On 23 January 2012 INTEGRAL will have a lunar eclipse about 3 hours after the earth eclipse. Planning the combination of manual and automatic and on-board autonomous operations for this eclipse is rather difficult and therefore re-planning of revolutions 1132 and 1133 is very difficult.
AO-9 Data Right Proposals approved 16 December 2011 The ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, Prof. Alvaro Giménez, has approved the recommendation of the Time Allocation Committee (TAC) for proposals to obtain data rights for targets within approved AO-9 observations. The proposers have been informed about the TAC decision and about the detailed data rights obtained. An overview of successful AO-9 data rights proposals can be found here. AO-9 Data Right Proposals - results 31 October 2011 During the call for Data Right Proposals (deadline 17 October 2011) the ISOC system received 52 valid proposals, requesting data rights to 155 fields and for 477 targets in total (a single data right proposal can request observational data from multiple fields defined in observing proposals and multiple sources in each field). As expected, the large majority of requests was for Compact Objects. The Time Allocation Committee will decide on the proposals by mid November 2011.
| Category | Number of proposals | Number of subscriptions | Number of sources requested | %
(# of proposals) | | Galactic Astronomy | 39
| 122
| 355 | 75.0 | Extragalactic Astronomy
| 12 | 23
| 60 | 23.1 | Nucleosynthesis and diffuse
continuum/line emission | 1
| 10
| 62 | 1.9 | | Total | 52
| 155 | 477 | 100 |
 An INTEGRAL view of the high-energy sky (the first 10 years)
25 October 2011 The 9th INTEGRAL workshop "An INTEGRAL view of the high-energy sky (the first 10 years)" will take place from 15-19 October 2012 in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Bibliothèque François Mitterrand). The main goal of this workshop is to present and to discuss latest results obtained in the field of high-energy astrophysics using INTEGRAL, as well as results from observations from other ground- and space-based high-energy observatories and from associated multi-wavelength campaigns. For more information see the workshop web page.
Closer than ever in the last nine years  25 October 2011 Today during the perigee crossing from revolution 1102 to 1103 at a height of only 2756.4 km, INTEGRAL has reached the lowest point in its orbit since the passage from revolution 3 to 4 on 25 October 2002. The INTEGRAL orbit is strongly evolving, from a perigee height of ~9500 km in the early mission to more than 13000 km in 2005/2006 followed by a decrease to the current value. In the coming years the orbit will again circularize somewhat, reaching a perigee height of close to 10000 km in late 2015. The increased particle radiation as INTEGRAL is passing through the proton belts is noted in accelerated degradation of the solar arrays. Still, the power margin is very good and appears sufficient to comfortably operate the satellite without additional power constraints until the end of the current mission extension. No significant effects of the increased radiation on the instruments have been observed. The image to the right visualizes the shape of three selected INTEGRAL revolutions for the early mission, peak perigee height and the perigee minimum. Note that the elliptical shapes seem elongated also due to projection effects as the plane of the orbit has rotated over the years. Click on the image to see a larger version. A movie created using Celestia to demonstrate the whole evolution can be found here (OGG format, 7.6 Mb).
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