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Description
ASCA (Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics) is the fourth Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite launched on February 20, 1993 (see Tanaka et al., 1994PASJ...46L..37T) The collaboration between Japanese and US scientists has been carried out in the developments of the X-ray telescopes, the X-ray CCD cameras, and software. ASCA observed more than 3000 targets before stopping scientific observations as a consequence of a huge solar flare occured in mid July, 2000. ISAS continued monitoring operation until the ASCA reentered the atmosphere on March 2, 2001. Scientific instrumentation of ASCA consists of four X-ray telescopes and corresponding focal plane detectors. Focal plane detectors are two X-ray CCD cameras (SIS: Solid-state Imaging Spectrometers) and two Gas Imaging Spectrometers (GIS). With these detectors, ASCA covers the energy range of 0.5-10 keV. This catalogue is a copy of the ASCA Observation log from the Data ARchive and Transmission System (DARTS), provided by the PLAIN center at ISAS/JAXA, Japan. All the ASCA data have been public. The data is archived in a target-oriented (strictly speaking, observation-oriented) structure, i.e., all the data produced from an observation is put into a directory --- although some exceptions exist for observations in very early epoch. Each dataset includes telemetry data, data products (event files, images, energy spectra, light curves, etc.), and calibration data. ISAS provides the telemetry and calibration data, and ASCA data processing center in ADF (Astrophysics Data Facility) at NASA/GSFC reproduces the data products.
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