For Scientists: The Long-Term Plan
This is the current Long-Term Plan (LTP) for IXPE. The Science Advisory Team requested that transient targets be added when and if they become bright. At such time, the LTP will be adjusted, attempting to minimize the impact on the overall plan; however, nothing is guaranteed.
IXPE is telemetry limited for bright sources and this requires that observations be handled slightly differently from the way most X-ray missions operate. If IXPE is observing a bright source that could potentially fill on-board storage, we shall divide the observation into multiple segments.
COLUMNS:
SG: This is a segment number. If it is zero, then the observation has not been segmented.
Name: This is a common name for the target.
Start: The Year-Month-Day the observation will begin. The observations ends just before the next target begins.
buffer: This is an estimate as to how much data will stll be on the spacecraft when the observation ends in MB. The on-board storage can hold just over 5500 MB and when planning we keep this number below 4000 MB.
| SG | Name | Start | buffer |
| 0 | 1ES 1959+650 | 2022-06-09 | 0.0 |
| 0 | 3C 279 | 2022-06-12 | 0.0 |
| 1 | Tycho | 2022-06-18 | 0.0 |
| 0 | Cyg X-1 (ToO) | 2022-06-19 | 826.7 |
| 2 | Tycho | 2022-06-21 | 0.0 |
| 0 | BL Lac | 2022-07-07 | 0.0 |
| 0 | Mrk 501 | 2022-07-10 | 0.0 |
| 0 | Circinus galax | 2022-07-12 | 0.0 |
| 1 | SN 1006 | 2022-07-25 | 0.0 |
| 0 | GX 301-2 | 2022-07-29 | 0.0 |
| 2 | SN 1006 | 2022-08-03 | 0.0 |
| 0 | X Persei | 2022-08-19 | 0.0 |
| 0 | MSH15-52 | 2022-08-24 | 0.0 |
| 0 | 1RXS J170849.0 | 2022-09-19 | 0.0 |
| 0 | GX9+9 | 2022-10-09 | 2926.8 |
| 0 | GRS 1915+105 | 2022-10-11 | 2150.8 |
NOTES
Plan only covers time up to mid Oct.
Currently the plan does not include observations of IC 4329A and 1ES 0229+200. These will be added when they next become observable.