JMU Semester 2007A Call for Proposals
1200 BST 05 October 2006The deadline for internal proposals for LT time (from ARI staff,
fellows, postdocs and postgrads) in semester 07A will be 31st October
2006.
A total of 223 hours will be available for JMU in 2007A. This time includes 105 hours which have already been pre-allocated for the semester, and a (10%) allocation of teaching time of 22.3 hours. Thus a total of 95.7 hours are available for new proposals.
The LT technical team request the TAC to overallocate by a factor of 1/3 in order to ensure the telescope is fully utilised at all times, although there can be no guarantee that proposals included in the oversubscription can necessarily be undertaken or completed.
Total time to be allocated in 07A is thus: 95.7 hours plus 73.6 hours
oversubscription.
- RATCam: Available
- SupIRCam: Available. (Currently it is offline for several months. However it is anticipated that it will be available in 2007A).
- RINGO: Available. Note that RINGO is a JMU Astrophysics
Research Institute internally-funded fast-track instrument. It is
an expert user instrument: potential users should contact the LT
Support Astronomer at
to discuss the
capability of the instrument and the feasibility of the observing
programme before submitting an observing proposal. - Autoguider: Available. The autoguider with
full capability will be available in 2007A. Note that overheads
for use of the autoguider will be 60 sec.
- Pointing: ~ 6 arcsec (rms)
- Tracking: seeing-limited images (FWHM >/= 0.8 arcsec):
- (open loop) approximately 1 minute exposures
- (closed loop) 30 minute exposures
- PIs need to provide an estimate of the minimum usable fraction (MUF) of observations for their programme which will make the data scientifically useful.
- Individual exposures with the autoguider are limited to 30 minutes.
- In general, the time taken to execute a Group (including both exposure times and overheads) should not exceed 1 hour unless there are compelling scientific reasons to request a longer time. The proposal should include a detailed justification of these reasons. It may not be possible to schedule groups with a duration longer than one hour if these seriously conflict with other programmes.
- If a field to be observed has a star brighter than 8th magnitude, the LT technical team reserves the right to refuse the exposure unless use is made of the facility to defocus the telescope.
