The Diffuse X-Ray Spectrometer (DXS)
In 1995, my career
turned from primarily instrumental work to data analysis when I
started to analyze data from the Diffuse X-ray Spectrometer
(DXS) experiment for my Ph.D. thesis. DXS (P.I. Wilt
Sanders, project scientist Dick
Edgar) was the first instrument to observe the diffuse X-ray
background with spectral resolution high enough to detect individual
complexes of atomic emission lines, confirming the hypothesis that
the diffuse X-ray background is composed primarily of line emission.
At the time we thought that these lines came primarily from highly
ionized species in a million-degree plasma that fills the nearby
Galaxy. Now it is thought that most of this emission arises locally
in the heliosphere from highly charged solar wind ions that charge
exchange with neutral hydrogen that sifts in from the nearby
interstellar medium.
- Processing ~2 Gb of raw telemetry into FITS binary tables using a large suite
of C programs
- Verification of data integrity
- Processing of extensive ground calibration dataset
- Maintenance of extensive software suite consisting of C and
FORTRAN programs and KSH scripts
- Migration of SCCS Y2K bug-ridden revision control system to RCS
- Maintenance of a DEC ULTRIX 4.2 workstation from 1992 -
present (yes, 16 years and counting!)
- Production of ~250 page thesis (download
PDF version - 2.7M)
- Publication of results
Jeffrey P. Morgenthaler
2008-12-17