The ING is pleased to announce a special call for proposals to the WHT service
programme, for up to nine nights in April. This opportunity, which extends to
all our communities, has arisen due to a delay in commissioning the laser guide
star beacon, GLAS. The available service time will also be used to evaluate
procedures for the anticipated expansion of the service programme to queue scheduled
observing, which we plan to implement in the future to best exploit the excellent
observing conditions on La Palma.
It is expected that nine nights, 1-4 April and 26-30 April, all bright of moon, will be available with ISIS (1-4 April), LIRIS (26-30 April), Adaptive Optics (OASIS, INGRID and OSCA) and the Aux Port Imager as the scheduled instrumentation.
Applicants should refer to the web pages of the respective instruments for further information on their performance; these pages are linked from the ING Astronomy page:
http://www.ing.iac.es/Astronomy/
The red arm of ISIS was recently fitted with a new E2V deep-depletion high quantum-efficiency CCD with exceptionally low-fringing properties; we especially encourage proposals to take advantage of the outstanding performance of this CCD. Further details are available at:
http://www.ing.iac.es/Astronomy/instruments/isis/isis_redplus.html
There are some restrictions on the observing modes offered for ISIS and LIRIS
in service observing; details for ISIS are available at:
http://www.ing.iac.es/Astronomy/instruments/isis/isis_service.html
and for LIRIS at:
http://www.ing.iac.es/Astronomy/instruments/liris/liris_sm.html
Proposals should be submitted by 28th February through the usual web application forms:
http://www.ing.iac.es/Astronomy/observing/service/
For this special call the usual 4-hour limit for service programmes is relaxed; proposals requesting up to a full night will be considered. Applicants should remember to include in their proposal a URL to clearly annotated finder charts.
Proposals will be refereed promptly and all applicants informed of their grades and status in the queue. Observations will be queued according to scientific ranking, with the goal of completing as much highly-ranked science as possible.
Ian Skillen, ING
7th February 2007