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| term | definition | links |
|---|---|---|
| ACD | (Anti-Coincidence Detector) The ACD is the collection of scintillating tiles that detect charged particles, and is crucial to background rejection. The ACD covers the tracker (the part of the LAT that converts gamma rays into electron-positron pairs and then tracks these pairs' trajectories). Charged particles will also register as signals in the tracker, so the ACD is used to determine if a signal is actually a charged particle and not a gamma ray. If an ACD tile has a "hit" (detects a charged particle) that lines up with a signal, then that fact is used to "veto" the signal (i.e., declare that it's not a gamma ray). | |
| Acceptance | Defined as the effective area integrated over the solid angle (units: m^2 sr). | LAT performance page |
| AGN (group) | (Active Galactic Nuclei) | AGN group page |
| ARR | (Autonomous Repoint Request) | |
| ATel | (Astronomer's Telegram) Multiwavelength, web-based short-notice publication system for reporting and commenting on new astronomical observations. | |
| ATS | Absolute Time Sequence. A series of spacecraft and/or instrument commands that are loaded on the Fermi spacecraft. | |
B
| term | definition | links |
|---|---|---|
| BA | (burst advocate) BAs are LAT team members who keep an eye on gamma-ray burst (GRB) activity. The GRB group has automatic software to check if the LAT detected statistically significant emission from GRBs. The BA's job is to check the output from the software and alert the rest of the group. BAs are on duty for a week at a time. | BA Confluence page |
| back | ||
| back-converting | ||
| batch / batch farm | SLACs workload management platform, and job scheduler. Uses the LSF (load sharing facility) product. Allows queuing and scheduling of batch jobs on the non-interactive slac computers | LSF at SLAC presentation from 2012, Info on using the farm |
| BGO | (bismuth germanate detector) | |
| blazar | ||
| BL Lac | ||
| boresight | ||
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| term | definition | link |
|---|---|---|
| FA | (flare advocate) | |
| FITS / fits / .fits / fit (file type) | (Flexible Image Transport System) FITS files are often used in astronomy, and are made of one or more HDUs (Header and Data Unit). Each HDU has a header with general information about the file, the instrument, etc., as well as a table or image. Public LAT data is always (?) distributed as FITS files. | FITS Support Office |
| FltOps | (Flight Operations) | |
| FOT | (Flight Operations Team) The FOT is the staff at the Mission Operations Center (at NASA Goddard), which controls the spacecraft. The FOT is responsible for, among other things, inputting special maneuvers such as TOOs. | |
| FOV / FoV | (field of view) | |
| front | ||
| front-converting | ||
| FSSC | Fermi Science Support Center | |
| FSW | (Flight Software) | |
| FT1 (file) | FT1 files are the LAT public data files with information on each individual photon. | |
| FT2 (file) | FT2 files are the LAT public data files with information on the spacecraft (where it is, where it's pointing, etc.). | |
| FTOOLS | A package of tools to manipulate FITS files. | FTOOLS main page |
| fv | (Fits Viewer) fv is a program to view FITS files. | fv main page |
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