The Intermediate Dispersion Spectrograph (IDS) is a long-slit spectrograph
which sits at the Cassegrain Focal station of the
2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope and is
equipped with two cameras, called the 235mm and 500mm Cameras
according to their respective focal lengths. Some
historical aspects of IDS are summarised at the public information web pages.
Starting from semester 06B, IDS is offered with the whole
set of gratings (16), but only with the 235 mm camera and the EEV10
CCD. Possible grating combinations with this configuration
allow dispersions of between 0.24 and 3.7 Å per pixel. The spatial
scale along the slit is 0.4 arcsec per pixel. The full unvignetted slit length
is 3.3 arcmin.
The
SIGNAL program
contains reliable updated measurements of the IDS throuhgput, with an
accuracy of some 20%. You can then safely use it to estimate your
exposure times.
Note that IDS will be scheduled in minimum blocks of 4 weeks, as
the ING can only support a small number of instrument changes each
semester. For this reason, we invite the community to present large
programmes to make the best use of the INT (smaller proposals asking no
less than 4 nights are still accepted). IMPORTANT: in case a long run is going to be covered by several observers, please let us know well in advance so that student support can be scheduled each time a new team goes up.
You can apply for time on the IDS through one of the ING time-allocating committees.
