THE ING NEWSLETTER No. 5, October 2001
GENERAL SCIENCE TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION OTHER NEWS FROM ING TELESCOPE TIME
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Applying for Time
Danny Lennon (Head of Astronomy, ING)
It is important that applicants for telescope time familiarise themselves with the latest news on instrumentation and detector combinations on offer, as well as with our scheduling restrictions. For the very latest news always refer to the ING web pages, homepage http://www.ing.iac.es, where application forms and style files may also be obtained. The ING's scheduling constraints were summarised in the first issue of the ING Newsletter and will not be repeated here, please refer to that issue, which is also available on our Astronomy web pages.
Note that PPARC are no longer distributing the PATT newsletter. Therefore UK applicants, along with all prospective applicants, are encouraged to subscribe to INGNEWS. You can subscribe to this mailing list by sending an email to majordomo@ing.iac.es with the message 'subscribe ingnews' in the body of the message. Please leave the subject field and the rest of the body of the message empty. A number of weeks before each application deadline, you will then receive a bulletin detailing instrument availability for the relevant semester.
What's New
As shown on the front cover of this issue, NAOMI tests have had considerable success with impressive performance even in the optical. In a separate article in this issue Chris Benn summarises the progress so far. Note that OSCA, the coronograph being developed for NAOMI, is now likely to be commissioned in semester 2002A.
Progress on the long-awaited new Small Fiber Module for AF2 was excellent and it was successfully commissioned in July 2001. Current estimates of the throughput of AF2 with the new fibres is that the they are similar to the best of the old large fibres. Since the relative throughput of the new fibres is quite uniform, unlike the old fibres, the average throughput is improved and estimated at 20%. An additional advantage with the new system is the use of coherent fibre bundles for fiducial stars which now permits autoguiding. Further details may be found in the article by Corradi et al. elsewhere in this issue. Note that large fibres can no longer be offered as an observing option !
As announced in the previous issue, availability of UES will be curtailed due to work on the Nasmyth platform this coming summer. In order to continue to provide access to a high resolution spectrograph at the ING we have successfully negotiated access to SARG on the TNG. Depending on demand, up to seven nights per semester will be available to the UK and NL communities. Prospective applicants should continue to apply to their respective national panels for SARG/TNG time. In exchange the Italian community will receive observing time on the WHT. Further details on the TNG and SARG may be found at http://www.tng.iac.es.
Email contact: Danny Lennon (djl@ing.iac.es)
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GENERAL SCIENCE TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION OTHER NEWS FROM ING TELESCOPE TIME © Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma, 2001.