Dear Reader, Welcome to the first message of the newly set up INGNEWS email information server. This service is intended for communicating news and opportunities of general interest from the UK/NL Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on La Palma rapidly to ING's user community. It replaces the older ING email Bulletin. Besides INGNEWS we will also shortly start publishing our six-monthly ING Newsletter. This Newsletter will be published primarily on the Web, and only a limited number of hardcopies will be distributed to libraries. The initial INGNEWS mailing list has been generated from exising lists of ING users and from the Bulletin mailing list, but anyone can subscribe or un-subscribe following the guidelines attached to this message. I hope you will enjoy this new service. This first issue contains an important Announcement of Opportunity for new instruments for the William Herschel Telescope, and an announcement for observing time under the CCI International Time Project for the telescopes on La Palma and Tenerife. Suggestions for subjects and improvements will gladly be received. Rene Rutten Director, ING =================================================================== Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes Instruments for the William Herschel Telescope ANNOUNCEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY FOR INSTRUMENTATION PROPOSALS The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes invites the astronomical community in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland and Spain to propose a new instrument for the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos observatory on La Palma. Proposals will be reviewed by the Instrumentation Working Group and put forward for approval by the ING Board. Final approval will be through the appropriate committees from the funding agencies. As a first step, this Announcement of Opportunity invites the submission of outline proposals for new instruments. Invitation for new instrument ideas ----------------------------------- The 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) has a mature suite of common-user instruments offering a wide range of observing options. The instrument suite (see Annex 1) has been build up over several years. Current ongoing developments centre on a common-user Adaptive Optics system in conjunction with a state-of-the-art IR camera, but beyond these developments, which are expected be completed within the next year, there are no further commitments yet. Within the context of the new generation of large telescopes the strategy for further development of the WHT is seen to concentrate on the exploitation of the Adaptive Optics focus, and further exploitation of the wide field at the Prime Focus for multi-object spectroscopy at visible and near-IR wavelengths. The ING Board have recently announced its wish to re-create a UK/NL joint development programme. Within this framework it invites the astronomical community to come forward with proposals for future common-user instruments for the WHT. These proposals will form the basis for a formal request for funding. It is not intended that the proposals be exhaustive or detailed at this stage, but they should be sufficiently comprehensive to form a judgement of the scientific merit, technical feasibility, and approximate cost of the proposed instrument. It is particularly important that the scientific goals be clearly and convincingly described, and that the proposed instrument would enjoy broad support from the community. Collaborations between users from the countries participating in the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes are particularly invited as this secures a large potential user base and widens the basis for funding. The successful proposal would receive an attractive amount of guaranteed observing time. Proposals may include any type of common-user instrument (or significantly enhance an existing instrument). Proposals in line with the strategic direction for the William Herschel Telescope as outlined above would be particularly welcome (for more details see points of contact below). Proposed instruments should not be of an experimental character, but aim to deliver a common-user facility instrument. This not only implies that certain design guidelines have to be followed, but the instrument should also have a reasonably large constituency of potential users. The instrument should be capable of being used effectively by first-time users, and the design should secure reliable operation and not incure a major drain of observatory resource during its operational lifetime. Any proposed instrument is expected to have a competitive lifetime of several years, taking into account the capabilities of the 10-m class telescopes such as Gemini, ESO-VLT and GranTeCan. Although no financial limit is set to any proposal, the estimated cost should be realistic and commensurate with the expected scientific return over the lifetime of the instrument. Although there is no guarantee for funding at this stage, the expectation is that the funding agencies will be able to fund at least one major new instrument for the WHT. Principal Investigators should be willing to take scientific responsibility for their proposal during further evaluation, construction, and commissioning phases, and actively participate in bidding for funds. The proposers are encouraged to obtain technical advice from experienced instrument building groups and from observatory staff. Queries regarding interfaces between the instrument and the telescope, the software and hardware environment, detector availability, and operational aspects should be addressed to observatory staff (main contact points given below, and see http://www.ing.iac.es/~eng/standards/stanindex.html for more detailed engineering guide lines). Procedure --------- Submission of proposals are invited in hardcopy, or electronic format (MS-WORD or PostScript format). Proposals should be send to: The Director Dr. R.G.M. Rutten Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes Apartado de Correos 321 E-38700 Santa Cruz de La Palma SPAIN email: rgmr@ing.iac.es tel: +34 922 425420 fax: +34 922 425408 Annex 2 provides a checklist of the proposal content. Deadline for submission is 10 October 1999, after which the proposals will be put forward to the ING Instrumentation Working Group for recommendation. The ING Board will review the recommendations in November 1999. During these assessment stages advice from external referees may be sought. The selected proposal will be brought forward for approval to funding agencies early in 2000. Final financial approval of the project may depend on a detailed design study which would have to be conducted at a later stage. Although there is no guarantee that any proposal will be funded, a highly ranked proposal with a demonstrated strong intrest from the community is likely to succeed in winning funds. For further information or assistance please contact Dr. Nic Walton (naw@ing.iac.es, tel: +34 922 425440) or Dr. Rene Rutten (rgmr@ing.iac.es, tel: +34 922 425420). Date: 15 June 1999 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ANNEX 1 Currently available instruments on the WHT ------------------------------------------ ISIS: long slit spectrograph for low and medium resolution spectroscopy. Includes options for spectro-polarimetry and imaging polarimetry. UES: Echelle spectrograph for high resolution multiple-order short slit, or single-order long slit spectroscopy. AUTOFIB: fibre positioner feeding 100+ fibres into the WYFFOS fibre spectrograph for low and medium resolution spectroscopy for many sources simultaneously, over a field of up to 1 degree. Ongoing enhancements include a new 1.6 arcsec fibre unit and a new camera for a 4k x 4k pixel CCD system. INTEGRAL: Integral field fibre bundles feeding to WYFFOS spectrograph for low and medium resolution spectroscopy over small fields. TAURUS: Fabry-Perot imaging spectrograph and tunable filter imager. LDSS: multi-object slit mask spectrograph and imager for low and medium resolution spectroscopy over a 12 arcmin field. PF imager: Prime Focus imager covering up to 16 x 16 arcmin. Auxiliary port imager: Cassegrain imager in the auxiliary focus with a small field of view. INGRID: Near IR imager for the (folded) Cassegrain focus, and science detector for the Adaptive Optics system NAOMI: Adaptive Optics system providing an IR and Optical AO-corrected focus. Notes: * INGRID and NAOMI are still under construction. * The IAC in Tenerife is developing an IR spectrograph for the WHT which may become a common-user system. * LDSS and TAURUS will be withdrawn as common-user instruments, but may remain available as private instruments. * Existing visiting instruments on the WHT include: CIRSI: a panoramic IR wide field imager. SAURON: an integral field spectrograph. SCam: an experimental camera for the novel STJ detectors. TEIFU: an integral field fibre feed from the adaptive optics focus in the WYFFOS spectrograph. Further information can be obtained at http://www.ing.iac.es/ or from Dr. Nic Walton (naw@ing.iac.es). ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ANNEX 2 Checklist for design study -------------------------- 1. Name and affiliation of PI and Co-Is 2. Scientific case 3. Technical description, including optical design, mechanical design, assembly and alignment, electronics design, mechanism control, software, detector. 4. Data reduction requirements and plans. 5. Cost estimate, including design, construction, commissioning, documentation, and spares. Hardware and manpower costs should be accounted for separately. 6. Indication of where the instrument could be built and indicate whether the skills and resources would be available. 7. Project plan with key mile stones, and expected completion dates from inception of project. ====================================================================== INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE (CCI) ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE AVAILABILITY OF INTERNATIONAL OBSERVING TIME WITH THE TELESCOPES AT THE EUROPEAN NORTHERN OBSERVATORY (ENO) OBSERVATORIO DEL ROQUE DE LOS MUCHACHOS (LA PALMA) OBSERVATORIO DEL TEIDE (TENERIFE) The International Scientific Committee (CCI) of the Roque de los Muchachos (ORM, La Palma) and Teide (OT, Tenerife) observatories invites applications for International Time Programmes (ITP) on telescopes installed at these Observatories. The ITP offers up to 18 days/nights on 10 telescopes, evenly distributed throughout the year and moon phases. The telescopes/instruments available under this scheme comprise a wide range of state-of-the-art observing facilities for solar and night-time astronomical observations (please visit the IAC Web site for details: www.iac.es/gabinete/orm/teles1.html and www.iac.es/gabinete/ oteide/instala1.html, with links to Web pages of telescopes owners/operators, when available) The aim of the ITP is to encourage large-scale international scientific projects of the highest quality that cannot easily be accommodated within other time allocation schemes. The observing programmes should concentrate on a single large-scale astronomical investigation. Especially encouraged are proposals that would benefit from the deployment of more than one facility, and which would be unlikely to obtain the necessary observing time through the usual time allocation panels because of the scale of the project or because of the difficulty to co-ordinate several telescopes. They should be international in their range of participants. Successful proposals are expected to involve astronomers from at least two of the European countries that have signed the Agreements for Co-operation in Astrophysics (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom). Scientific excellence is a prime consideration. Each proposal will be assessed scientifically by two or more independent referees of international standing. The CCI reserves the right not to make an award on one or more telescopes if the quality of the proposals is not adequate to justify their use. The CCI may award time to one or more projects. In particular the CCI recognises that there are likely to be separate solar and night-time projects. Once a project is selected, and with the agreement of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, any Spanish institution shall have the right to join the programme if it wishes. Annual brief progress reports will be required by the CCI from successful applicants, until such time as the scientific programme has effectively been completed. An international scientific meeting should be held in the Canary Islands to discuss and publicise the results of the ITP during the year following the final period of observations. On completion of the programme, and no later than two years after the final period of observing time, a full report should be submitted to the CCI for publication in its Annual Report. With the intention of promoting access by new users to major research facilities, the EC is currently assessing an application by ENO for access to the Canarian Observatories to secure funding under the V Framework Programme (action "Support for Access to Research Infrastructures"). Any European astronomers, from EU member or associated states1, may request observing time under this EC contract as well for funding to cover the costs incurred in relation to observing trips, and scientific, technical and logistic assistance. Non-European astronomers can be included in the proposals although they will not be eligible for EC funding. Further information on access to ENO telescopes - via the ITP or national time allocation panels - through the EC Programme can be obtained at http://www.iac.es/eno, once this contract has been approved. Proposals are considered on an annual cycle. The closing date for submission of proposals to the ITP is 30 June each year, except in 1999 (deadline shifted to July 16th). There are no application forms. However, proposals must contain the following: PI, collaborators and institutes; scientific case; report on progress with previous ITP; telescope(s) and instrumentation required; target list; technical justification; management of the programme. Awards are normally announced in November and scheduling takes place no earlier than February of the following year. The facilities of the Observatories are also described in a special issue of Astrophysical Letters & Communications (volume 28, pages 45 - 215, 1991) and in the CCI Annual Report, available from the Secretary, or via the IAC Web (http://www.iac.es/home.html) More information can be obtained from the Secretary of the CCI, Ms Monica Murphy, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, E38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands. E-Mail: cci@iac.es. Night-time facilities: Telescope Location Details from E-Mail 4.2m WHT ORM Dr C Benn, ING, La Palma. crb@ing.iac.es 2.5m INT ORM Dr N Walton, ING, La Palma naw@ing.iac.es 2.5m TNG ORM Dr Fabio Bortoletto bortoletto@tng.iac.es 2.5m NOT ORM Dr. V Piirola,Tuorla,Turku. piirola@astro.utu.fi 1.5m CST OT Dr Francisco Garzon, IAC. fgl@ll.iac.es 1.0m JKT ORM Dr J Telting jht@ing.iac.es 18cm CAMC ORM Dr L Helmer, CUO, Brorfelde. camc@astro.ku.dk Solar facilities: Telescope Location Details from E-Mail 70cm VTT OT Dr D Soltau, KIS, Freiburg soltau@kis.uni-freiburg.de 50cm SVST ORM Prof G Scharmer,Stockholm Obs. scharmer@astro.su.se 45cm GCT OT Dr E Wiehr, USG, Gottingen. ewiehr@uni-sw.gwdg.de 90cmTHEMIS OT Dr G Ceppatelli ceppatel@themis.iac.es ---------------- 1 EU member/associated states, and states associated to ENO are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Liechteinstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ================================================================