[BAA Comets] Submittings FITS images of 67P to the ESA/PSA archive

[Nick James]

Last week I was at the Royal Society in London for the first day of a 
series of meetings about Comet 67P. The Rosetta mission is now entering 
its final stages with end-of-mission planned for late September when the 
spacecraft will spiral in to "land" on the nucleus. 67P is now getting 
quite faint and it is low in the western evening sky from the UK and 
difficult to image due to the summer twilight.

While I was there I met Padma Yanamandra-Fisher who reminded me that ESA 
have set up their Planetary Science Archive to receive amateur images of 
the comet. This is the first time that they have done this and a great 
opportunity for us to share our raw data with the pros.

In order to upload data you need to be registered. If you are not 
already registered you can request access using this page:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1lgEQls6gO1lyVP98dZPAcTt9WpdGxUudSbPWn

There are some fairly simple rules for uploading data. The images must 
be in FITS format and the files must be named in a particular way. 
Details of this are in the Observing Guide here:

http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/amateur-observers-guide

In this guide the filename format is defined as:

YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_67P_FSSNNvx.FIT

where F = filter, SS = exposure time (in s), NN are the observer's 
initials, vx = version of file (v1, v2 etc). Wendy Clark has produced a 
useful guide describing how iTelescope images can be renamed and 
uploaded using a particular FTP client. This guide is available via the 
Facebook 67P group but the renaming is fairly straightforward since all 
the information needed should be in the FITS header.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/paca.rosetta67p/files/

If you can't access this drop me an email and I'll send you a copy.

Let me know if you submit any images or have any questions.

Nick James. Director, BAA Comet Section.