IN CONFIDENCE INGB(03)11

9-10 October 2003

PPARC / NWO / IAC

ISAAC NEWTON GROUP BOARD

DIRECTOR’S REPORT – OPERATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT

Report by R G M Rutten, ING

1. Telescope downtime due to technical problems on normal observing nights averaged 2.1, 1.2 and 2.5 % on the WHT, INT and JKT respectively during semester 2003A (1 February - 31 July 2003). These figures are analysed in more detail in Annex 1, whilst the historic trend is summarised in the graph below. It is pleasing to note that the downtime figures remain very good, in particular in the light of the changes since last year of the Operations Team who provide the first line defence against technical failures.

2. A main event at the WHT has been the installation of NAOMI in its purpose-built, temperature-controlled enclosure GRACE on the ex-UES Nasmyth platform. The temperature control appears to have paid off, the deformable mirror has been very stable. Dr Annejet Meijler inaugurated the GRACE building in May.

3. Considerable progress has also been made during the last year with improving the crucial NAOMI afternoon setup of the deformable mirror; better PSF’s are achieved, and much faster as well. A long-standing complication with the segmented deformable mirror is the absolute phasing of all mirror segments. A new technique was devised based on the principles a Savart-plate interferometer, which allows more accurate identification of which segments are out of position.

The development programme is currently focussed on identifying what limits on-sky performance on bright guide stars, and investing in appropriate upgrades (e.g. new WFS readout modes, faster mirror response, low-noise WFS CCD).

Science observations were carried out in July and August 2003 in service mode, for five programmes allocated time by the TACs.

4. In July, the optical integral-field spectrograph OASIS was commissioned with NAOMI in GRACE. First light was obtained on July 11. There were very few technical problems, and most of the commissioning goals were achieved during this run. In 0.8 arcsec seeing, delivered FWHM was typically 0.5 arcsec, i.e. image area was reduced by a factor 2.5. A new calibration unit for NAOMI (providing additional facilities for OASIS, and a new SDSU-based acquisition camera) and a dedicated red-sensitive MIT/LL CCD were also commissioned. The atmospheric dispersion corrector optics and automatic dichroic changer unit, both required for future routine operation with OASIS, will probably be commissioned later this year.

5. Richard Wilson's (Durham) SLODAR system was tested in the GHRIL Nasmyth focus in April. SLODAR uses double stars to measure the C_n² profile of atmospheric turbulence, similar to the more widely used SCIDAR system. SLODAR is now recording turbulence data every night through summer on the Mercator telescope.

6. The WHT remains at the heart of the Durham/ESO initiatives on laser guide stars experiments. During this summer and fall again experiments will be carried out, focussing on the use of Rayleigh laser guide stars for large and extremely large telescopes of the future.

7. The AUTOFIB2 – WYFFOS multi-fibre spectrograph had three runs on the telescope this semester. Very little time was lost to technical problems, showing that the intermittent problems experienced previous semester have been overcome. The complexity of the robotic fibre positioner, however, does imply that extensive pre-observing engineering tests will always be required.

8. Variation of the PSF across the INGRID field of view at Cassegrain due to a tilt of the detector relative to the optical axis, as well as resolving the intermittent problems with mechanisms inside INGRID will be addressed during the 2003B stand-down of the instrument. ING’s inclination is to not offer INGRID at Cassegrain anymore, but to carry our IR imaging at this focus with LIRIS in the future. In this way, INGRID operation can be optimised for the NAOMI focus.

9. The WHT has become even more popular with visiting instruments. Proposals were received for 7 different visiting instruments to be mounted on the WHT in 2003B: PNS, SAURON, CIRPASS, SCAM, ULTRACAM, INTEGRAL and PLANETPOL. Five could be scheduled for use in 2003B.

10. Semester 2003A has been the last semester that the INT has been working as a two-instrument facility. From semester 03B, IDS is not offered any longer, and the INT+WFC has become a single instrument telescope. Also the programme of service observing has been stopped. In terms of night-time support, the major change in the support model from semester 03B is that no Telescope Operator will be present anymore. Furthermore, placement students are being trained to provide first-night astronomy support, as was successfully done at the JKT for the past few years. Engineering support will remain as is.

11. The JKT has enjoyed its last semester of regular observations with a suitable low level of support effort, without night-time engineering support and employing students to take care of introducing visiting astronomers. The telescope has been taken out of service since Aug 1^st. In anticipation of further decision on the possible future use of the telescope, the telescope and instrument system will be kept in tact in order to facilitate easy recovery of operation. A minimum maintenance plan is being drawn up.

12. Annex 3 provides an overview of the proposals that have been granted time through the national time allocation committees for semester 03B. The following table and diagram presents the historic trends of pressure factors of the telescopes for the UK, NL and SP communities, averaged over dark, grey and bright time and all instruments.

	WHT			INT			JKT
Semester	UK	NL	SP	UK	NL	SP	UK	NL	SP
03A	3.0	0.8	2.8	4.0	2.3	2.0	1.7	1.6	1.1
03B	3.0	1.6	1.8	3.0	2.7	1.6	-	-	-

ENHANCEMENTS AND DEVELOPMENTS

13. The main development activity over the past period revolved around the supporting infrastructure and enhancements of the adaptive optics instrument suit. Central in this was the construction of the GRACE building, creating a controlled environment for adaptive optics exploitation in the WHT Nasmyth focus. This has been a success, with noticeable positive effects on the performance of NAOMI. For one thing, NAOMI can now remain where it is, without have to be removed when another instrument needs to occupy the focal station. But also the temperature stability has reduced the negative impact of thermal changes on the stability of the segmented mirror control.

Several further enhancements around NAOMI are still to be completed, such as improving throughput (new tertiary mirror and derotator coatings), improving wavefront sensor detection limit, reducing the thermal background in INGRID, and improving NAOMI performance for bright starts (now more important in view of possible laser guide star deployment).

14. Following the completion of GHRIL, the OASIS spectrograph was installed using the new AO corrected focal station. In spite of the now very complex suit of instruments, the integration and commissioning went surprisingly well, not in the least thanks to the huge experience brought by the Lyon team. The overall complexity of the AO suite makes it even more important that top level operational controls are kept as simple as possible.

15. ING has been investigating the potential of the newly developed Low-Light-Level CCD (or L3CCD, from E2V, formerly EEV/Marconi). These CCDs have an extended readout register, allowing the weak signals from the detector to be amplified prior to digitisation, achieving very high signal gains. This allows a reduction of read noise to close to zero electrons, at the expense of effective loss of QE for high count rates. In situations where a measurement is read-noise limited, such as is usually the case for continuous high-speed wavefront sensing in AO applications, an L3CCD can be of enormous benefit. Performance of the L3CCD has been confirmed in the lab under realistic conditions. The results have been very positive, and expectations are that when employed as a WFS detector NAOMI would be able to go 1-2 magnitudes fainter. Given the very positive outcome of the laboratory study, the study now proceeds with assessing what is required for the specific implementation of this detector in the NAOMI WFS.

16. Final commissioning of the LIRIS IR spectrograph has unfortunately been delayed until semester 2004A, but hopefully this can take place early in the semester in order to start science exploitation as soon as possible. In the mean time, a package of infrastructure activities has been agreed between ING and the LIRIS team at the IAC. The main components being the cooling systems and tools for monitoring the instrument when not on the telescope.

17. Mainly due to pressure on the observing schedule and the limited number of Discretionary nights, commissioning of the WYFFOS long camera has been delayed until Semester 2004A. A large-format detector mosaic of 4k x 4k pixels based on MIT/LL CCDs is still awaiting chip delivery.

18. The current autoguider systems are becoming more difficult to maintain and are therefore being replaced with cameras based on 1k x 1k and 512 x 512 pixel E2V CCDs. Three systems have now been commissioned: one for NAOMI acquisition and two which will be used for acquisition at Cassegrain and with INTEGRAL, and for autoguiding with AUTOFIB. An additional camera (new NAOMI simplexing camera, up to 18 Hz readout) is almost complete, and a fifth one will soon replace the current Cassegrain autoguider camera.

19. ING has been providing assistance in the construction of SuperWASP, a robotic wide-field camera system that is being erected in the vicinity of the generator house, on the road up to the JKT. At the time of writing the system is nearly operational, albeit not yet in robotic mode. Work carried out by ING falls under an agreement of repayment activities with the Queen’s University of Belfast, but besides this, there is also scientific interest within the ING astronomy group.

INFRASTRUCTURE

20. Building work has been taking place in the WHT building where office space and amenities have been re-arrangement, allowing more people to be housed there. Similarly, at the Mayantigo building work has started to restructure office space on the second and third floor, making more efficient use of the available space and allowing ING to sub-let space to others.

21. The observatory’s computing network connectivity to the outside world remains an area for concern. In view of new installations that will come on-line in the near future (MAGIC, Liverpool telescope, GTC) that will have to occupy the same very small bandwidth connecting the whole of the observatory to the outside world, it is likely that major data congestion is going to take place. ING’s investigation of alternatives is progressing well, and is focussing initially on improving the capacity from the sea-level base to the mountain top. If all goes well and this is working well, it will be feasible for ING to have a separate, dedicated Internet connection using commercial lines, either as backup in case of failure, or even as our primary port to the Internet.

USER FEEDBACK

22. All but one of the WHT 18 user feedbacks for 03A rated their runs “good” or “excellent” (with the exception of poor rating due to bad weather). The one exception (rated “sufficient”) was a run that suffered a significant loss of observing time due to a setup problem, although the feedback highlighted the difficulty of locating the observer’s cars rather than the loss of observing time! There were no common themes in the (few) negative comments this semester, apart from complaints about Residencia food.

23. Also on the INT and JKT all but one of the feedback reports had very positive quality ratings. The one JKT feedback report that was classed as “poor” complained about a mix of weather down time and one night where time was lost due to the mirror petals getting stuck.

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND OUTREACH

24. The ING-IAC joint conference "Satellites and Tidal Streams" took place from 26 to 30 May, gathering more than 80 participants from all over the world. The proceedings will be published in an ASP Conference Series volume.

25. On 23 August a live BBC2 TV broadcast took place from the Isaac Newton Telescope as part of the special programme “The All Night Star Party”. During the 1 hour and 30 minutes broadcast from Joddrel Bank, the La Palma and the INT Wide Field Camera featured a number of times when live images of requested objects were shown live to the audience. The event, announced as the "biggest mass-observing event ever seen on television" received very good feedback from both spectators and BBC executives.

26. ING collaborated with the La Palma Astronomical Association to show Mercury transit the Solar disc on 7 May live on the web. This event coincided with the inauguration of the Liverpool Telescope. In general, ING continues to support public outreach activities on La Palma organised by the La Palma Astronomical Association, IAC and the Cabildo, such as public observations, talks and visits to the observatory. In particular, several events were organised for the public coinciding with the recent opposition of Mars.

27. Again many visits took place during recent months. Probably the most special visit was on 6 June, when the Spanish minister of Science and Technology visited the WHT at night and had the opportunity to witness astronomical observations and meet the astronomers for that night. The minister was primarily on La Palma to chair the IAC board meeting on the following day. Furthermore, in August a high profile group, including members of the Utrecht University Council visited the WHT. Their primary reason for the visit was related to the DOT.

28. On 21 July a group of students from Thomas Hardy School from Dorchester (Dorset, UK) observed on a discretionary night on the JKT. They were able to acquire images of several objects selected by them, including Mars.

29. This year the public open day was limited to one day, due to scheduling constraints. On 15 August some 950 visitors were shown round the WHT. During the open day also other installations such as MAGIC, Mercator, Liverpool Telescope, TNG and NOT were open to the public.

30. The following press releases based on work carried out at ING were sent out by ING or other institutions:

· "Stellar Census Detects More Red and Brown Dwarfs". NAM Press Release, 2 April.

· Astronomers Find "Naked" Galaxies, Devoid of Dark Matter". NAM Press Release, 2 April.

· "Acuerdo entre el Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias y el Grupo de Telescopios Isaac Newton". IAC Press Release, 6 May.

· "Congreso Internacional de Astrofisica en La Palma". IAC Press Release, 22 May.

· "Vida inteligente en el Universo - Conferencia pública en el Real Club Náutico de Santa Cruz de La Palma, miércoles 28 de mayo a las 20:00 horas". ING Press Release, 27 May.

· "WASP prepares to search for a thousand new planets". PPARC Press Release, 28 May.

· "School Students set to Discover Exploding Stars in Distant Galaxies", using images from the INT. National School Observatory Press Release, 24 June.

· "Jornadas de Puertas Abiertas en el Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos". IAC Press Release, 28 July.

· "Los telescopios del Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos reciben unas 3.000 visitas en la Jornada de Puertas Abiertas del pasado 15 de agosto". IAC Press Release, 18 August.

ACTION

31. The Board is invited to note the report.

Summary of technical downtime for Semester 03A Annex 1 to INGB(03)11

Summary of technical downtime for each telescope for nights of scheduled observing during Semester 03A, 1 February - 31 July 2003, excluding nights with 'private' instruments:

WILLIAM HERSCHEL TELESCOPE

Total hours lost:	29 hours
Total no. of faults reported:	44
Average downtime per fault:	40 minutes

The following faults caused more than 3 hours to be lost on a given night.

· 3 hours were lost when the NAOMI chiller failed (used to cool the WFS CCD and other components).

· 3 hours lost due to problems with focussing the Cryocam V in conjunction with INTEGRAL.

· 5 hours lost due to a human error when placing a grating in ISIS.

ISAAC NEWTON TELESCOPE

Total hours lost:	16.6 hours
Total no. of faults reported:	70
Average downtime per fault:	14 minutes

The following faults caused more than 3 hours to be lost on a given night.

· 5 hours were lost when the CCD camera lost vacuum, causing it to warm up.

· 4 hours were lost due the the IDS collimator being loose in its holder.

JACOBUS KAPTEYN TELESCOPE

Total hours lost:	33 hours
Total no. of faults reported:	48
Average downtime per fault:	41 minutes

Faults which caused more than 3 hours to be lost on a given night:

· 10 hours were lost when the mirror covers got stuck.

· 10 hours were lost when the telescope experience tracking problems resulting from an electronics failure.

· 3 hours were lost when the telescope CAMAC system had to be rebooted.

Use of S/D time during Semester 03A Annex 2 to INGB(03)11

Use of Service, Discretionary and Standdown time during semester 03A. The tables below list the breakdown of time spent carrying out service observing, engineering work, and commissioning time for each telescope.

WILLIAM HERSCHEL TELESCOPE

	Number of nights	Percentage
Service observing	17.0	38.6
Weather and technical down time associated with service	5.4	12.3
Telescope Quality Control (pointing tests, optical aberrations etc)	0.9	2.0
Instrument Quality Control (throughput, alignment, testing new features etc.)	3.2	7.3
Commissioning (OASIS, NAOMI, LIRIS)	12.3	28.0
Aluminising	0.0	0.0
Bad weather associated with D-time	3.8	8.6
Technical problems associated with D-time	1.4	3.2
Total	44.0	100

ISAAC NEWTON TELESCOPE

	Number of nights	Percentage
Service observing	12.1	67.3
Weather loss associated with service	5.0	27.7
Technical problems associated with service	0.1	0.5
Telescope Quality Control (pointing and tracking tests)	0.1	0.8
Instrument Quality Control (throughput, setup etc)	0.1	0.5
Aluminising	0.0	0.0
Commissioning	0.0	0.0
Bad weather associated with D-time	0.6	3.2
Technical problems associated with D-time	0.0	0.0
Total	18.0	100

JACOBUS KAPTEYN TELESCOPE

	Number of nights	Percentage
Service observing	0	0
Student training	8	100
Total	8	100

Summary of successful applications for Semester 03B Annex 4 to INGB(03)11

Listed are: PI, Reference, Instrument, Allocation, Title

William Herschel Telescope

UK PATT

· Bower (Durham), W/2003B/19, SAURON 3D The Sauron Deep Survey: Exploring the Lyman-alpha haloes of massive galaxies at z=3

· Burleigh (Leicester), W/2003B/63, NAOMI 0.5G NAOMI followup observations of very low mass companions to nearby white dwarfs

· Charles (Southampton), W/2003B/39, ISIS 1G O/R Determining system parameters of a Soft X-ray transient in outburst

· Collins (Liverpool), W/2003B/27, ISIS 4D Environmental dependence of the fundamental plane of brightest cluster galaxies

· Crowther (University College London), W/2003B/09, ISIS 2G Wolf-Rayet stars in the metal-rich environment of M31

· Dalton (Oxford), W/2003B/61, CIRPASS 4G 4B Star formation at redshift ~1

· Dhillon (Sheffield), W/2003B/31, ULTRACAM 0.5B ULTRACAM observations of the transiting extrasolar planet HD209458b

· Dufton (Belfast), W/2003B/03, AF2/WYFFOS 2B Spectroscopy of h + c Persei to support VLT/FLAMES survey

· Fitzsimmons (Belfast), W/2003B/45, ULTRACAM 0.5B The 13th/14th November Stellar Occultation by Titan

· Folha (University of Porto, Portugal), W/2003B/15, ISIS 1B Excess Emission in T Tauri Stars: the Missing link

· Folha (University of Porto, Portugal), W/2003B/16, NICS 1B (TNG) Excess Emission in T Tauri Stars: the Missing link

· Jarvis (Oxford), W/2003B/37, PFC 4D Weak lensing by cluster mass distributions traced by radio galaxies at z=0.5

· Marsh (Southampton), W/2003B/55, ULTRACAM 2B Stochastic Variability of Accretion Discs

· Marsh (Southampton), W/2003B/56, ISIS 1D 2G Orbital Periods of Post Common Envelope Binary stars from the SDSS

· Mathioudakis (Belfast), W/2003B/26, ULTRACAM 4B High frequency oscillations in active cool stars

· McCaughrean (Potsdam, Germany), W/2003B/64, CIRPASS 4B Spectral typing IR/X-ray selected brown dwarf candidates in the Trapezium Cluster

· McLure (Edinburgh), W/2003B/49, ISIS 4D 1G Exploring the connection between bulge/black-hole mass and radio luminosity from z=0 to z=2

· Meikle (Imperial College London), W/2003B/02, ISIS 30H O/R Detailed study of the physics of nearby Type Ia Supernovae

· Merrett (Nottingham), W/2003B/32, PN.S 4G A Deep Kinematic Survey of Planetary Nebulae in M31

· Nelemans (Cambridge), W/2003B/29, ISIS 4B Testing common envelope theory and SN Ia progenitor models with double white dwarfs

· Nelemans (Cambridge), W/2003B/30, ISIS 2G Follow-up of new AM CVn candidates

· O stensen (ING, La Palma), W/2003B/60, NAOMI 3B Resolving sdB binary systems with Adaptive Optics

· Page (MSSL/UCL), W/2003B/52, AF2/WYFFOS 2D Optical identification of faint X-ray sources in the 1h XMM-Newton/Chandra spectroscopic survey

· Pollacco (Belfast), W/2003A/22, 2B (LT) Characterising the Planetary Nebula central star population

· Smartt (Cambridge), W/2003B/22, PFC 4D An image archive to identify the progenitors of future core-collapse supernovae

· Smith (Hertfordshire), W/2003B/05, ISIS/Pol 3G Scattering geometries and the broad-line region in Radio-Quiet Quasars

· Smith (University College London), W/2003B/20, ISIS 3B The Massive Star Population of Wolf-Rayet Galaxies

· Vink (Imperial College London), W/2003B/24, ISIS/Pol 4B Spectropolarimetry of T Tauri Stars

· Wesson (University College London), W/2003B/62, ISIS 2D ORL abundances and hydrogen-deficient clumps in PNe with H-deficient central stars

· Wills (Sheffield), W/2003B/13, ISIS 2G Triggering the Activity in Giant Elliptical Galaxies

NL NFRA PC

· Douglas (Groningen), w03bn014, PN.S 2G 1B A Deep Kinematic Survey of Planetary Nebulae in M31

· Emonts (Groningen), w03bn005, ISIS 1G 1B Origin and evolution of AGN activity in gas-rich radio galaxies

· Groot (Nijmegen) w03bn017, ISIS 5B Spectroscopic classification of the KISO survey: a search for AM CVn stars

· Klein Wolt (University of Amsterdam), w03bn008, ULTRACAM 2G Optical analogues of X-ray timing phenomena in X-ray binaries using ULTRACAM and RXTE

· Kuijken (Leiden), w03bn004, NAOMI 2B M31 microlensing: checking Mira contamination with nIR AO imaging

· Peletier (Groningen), w03bn006, SAURON 4D 1G Mapping the stellar dynamics and populations of barred galaxies

· Prins (ING La Palma), w03bn009, AF2-Wyffos 1G Spectroscopic confirmation of supernova remnants in M31

· Quirrenbach (Leiden), w03bn015, SARG (TNG) 1.5B Line Bisector Variations for K Giant Stars with Possible Planetary Companions

· Wijers (University of Amsterdam), w03bn003, 10H O/R The nature of Gamma-Ray Bursts and their use as cosmological probes

· de Zeeuw (Leiden), w03bn013, SAURON 4D 2G A spectroscopic survey of the centers of intermediate-to-late spiral galaxies with SAURON

SP CAT

· Alfaro (IAA Granada), W28/2003B, INTEGRAL 2D

· Arribas (IAC Tenerife), W14/2003B, INTEGRAL 3D

· Casares (IAC Tenerife), W2/2003B, ISIS O/R

· Castro-Tirado (IAA Granada), W18/2003B, O/R

· Christensen (Potsdam, Germany), W11/2003B, INTEGRAL 1B

· Erwin (IAC Tenerife), W21/2003B, ISIS 3B

· Negueruela (Alicante), W7/2003B, ISIS 1B

· Perez (IAA Granada), W3/2003B, ISIS 2G

· Perez-Fournon (IAC Tenerife), W27/2003B, PFC 4D

· Rebolo (IAC Tenerife), W10/2003B, AF2 3B

· Ruiz-Lapuente (Barcelona), W25/2003B, PFC 1G

· Ruiz-Lapuente (Barcelona), W24/2003B, ISIS 1D 2G

· Sanchez (Potsdam, Germany), W12/2003B, INTEGRAL 3B

· Shahbaz (IAC Tenerife), W20/2003B, Ultracam 2G

· Vilchez (IAA Granada), W9/2003B, ISIS 3D

· Zapatero (LAEFF, Madrid), W8/2003B, NAOMI 4B

· Zurita (ING La Palma), W22/2003B, PFC 1B

SP CAT

· Cepa (IAC Tenerife), W17/2003B, PFC 5D

· Herrero (IAC Tenerife), W13/2003B, ISIS 4G

TNG timeshare

· Moretti (Padova), T032, AF2 1D 1G Ages and metal abundances of star clusters in M33

Isaac Newton Telescope

UK PATT

· Drew (Imperial College London), I/2003B/14, WFC 40B/G IPHAS -- The INT/WFC photometric Ha survey of the northern galactic plane

· Fitzsimmons (Belfast), I/2003B/09, WFC 1G O/R Rapid-response astrometry of potentially hazardous asteroids

· Inskip (Cambridge), I/2003B/10, WFC 5D 1G Understanding the stellar populations and alignment effect in distant radio galaxies

· Irwin (Cambridge), I/2003B/12, WFC 3D 4G Probing the spatial distribution and structure of the Monoceros Ring

· McGroarty (Dublin), I/2003B/07, WFC 4D Final Epoch Observations of Large Scale Outflows from Young Stars

· McLure (Edinburgh), I/2003B/03, WFC 5G A photometric redshift study of radio galaxy environments

· Naylor (Exeter), I/2003B/11, WFC 7B What Triggers Star Formation? A Study of the Recent Star Formation History of the Perseus Arm and Local Spur

· Ramsay (MSSL), I/2003B/02, WFC 4G WFC High Time Resolution Survey - Exploring a new temporal parameter space

· Tanvir (Hertfordshire), I/2003B/13, WFC 20H O/R The nature of Gamma-Ray Bursts and their use as cosmological probes

NL NFRA PC

· Aragon (Groningen), i03bn002, WFC 3D Measuring Galaxy Spin Alignments along the Pisces-Perseus Ridge in the Vicinity of A262

· van den Berg (Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Italy), i03bn007, WFC 7G Photometric variability of optically faint Chandra X-ray sources in M67

· Braun (NFRA), i03bn005, WFC 4D The STARFORM/Ha survey: Probing the recent history of star formation in spirals

· Habing (Leiden), i03bn003, WFC 2B Monitoring of asymptotic giant branch stars in Local Group Galaxies

· Helmi (Utrecht), i03bn006, WFC 3D Star Streams and High Velocity Clouds in the Milky Way Halo

· Kuijken (Leiden), i03bn001, WFC 6G A survey for halo planetary nebulae in M31

· Wijers (University of Amsterdam), w03bn003, WFC 20H O/R The nature of Gamma-Ray Bursts and their use as cosmological probes

UK/NL WFS Programmes

· Walton (Cambridge), WFS4, WFC 10D/G The Local Group Census

· Watson (Leicester), WFS4, WFC 7D/G An Imaging Programme for the XMM-Newton Serendipitous X-ray Sky Survey

SP CAT

· Castro-Tirado (IAA Granada), W18/2003B WFC 4 x 1.5-hour O/R

· Deeg (IAC Tenerife), I1/2003B WFC 7B

· Erwin (IAC Tenerife), I10/2003B WFC 3G+1D1G1B

· Leisy (ING La Palma), I6/2003B WFC 10B

· Lopez-Aguerri (IAC Tenerife), I7/2003B WFC 3G

· Martinez-Delgado (MPI, Heidelberg, Germany), I12/2003B WFC 1D

· Ribas (Barcelona), I2/2003B WFC 3D 2G

· Rosenberg (IAC Tenerife), I9/2003B WFC 3D 1G

· Vilchez (IAA Granada), I5/2003B WFC 4D 1G

Spanish additional time allocations

· Herrero (IAC Tenerife), I8/2003B

· Balcells (IAC Tenerife), I11/2003B

· Transfer to CAT 1G 6B