Proposals are solicited for Yale observing time on the SMARTS telescopes, WIYN, and the Keck telescopes. Full proposals are due on the first Friday of March for the B semester and the first Friday of September for the A semester. Pre-proposals for WIYN and Keck are due a week before the proposal deadline, also on Friday. For 2010B, the deadline is Friday March 5, 2010. Pre-proposals for WIYN and Keck are due on Friday, February 26, 2010.
Pre-proposals for WIYN and Keck should list the intended telescope (WIYN, Keck I or Keck II), instrument, number of nights, lunar phase, and the possible observing period (e.g., "Oct-Dec").
The pre-proposal information will be made available on a website so that proposers can amend their proposals based on the anticipated proposal pressure for a particular telescope,time of year, and/or lunar phase. The pre-proposal information only serves to help spread proposals over these parameters: the actual proposal may obviously deviate from the pre-proposal, and the pre-proposal will not be taken into account in the TAC process.
Completed pre-proposals should be sent to Victoria Gardner.
Time requests for all telescopes and instruments should be formatted using the following form:
yaleprop.tex (example proposal) | yprop10B.sty (latex style file to use) | yaleprop.pdf (pdf file of example)
Completed proposals should be sent to Victoria Gardner.
Submitted proposals are posted on a password protected website for TAC review.
The astronomy department revised its telescope allocation procedures in 2008. The new procedures can be found in this document. These procedures were reviewed in December of 2009 and remain unchanged.
For semester 2010B (August 09-January 10) SMARTS will continue to offer
five instruments on four telescopes. Note also the observing modes:
1.5m telescope:
Spectroscopy with RCSpec (low res) or echelle (high res)
Service observing only. Monitoring or ToO programs are
supported. Gratings 47 and 26 are greatly favored for
the RC Spec - others are allowed, but may be
unschedulable. Observations are quite restricted when 9 <LST<19.
1.3m telescope:
Optical and IR photometry with ANDICAM. BVRIJHK
only. Service observing only. No more than 1 hr/night
per program except in special cases. Monitoring and ToO
programs are strongly encouraged.
1.0m telescope:
Optical photometry with Y4KCam (20 arcminute field
4K x 4K). Traditional observing only. Many filters
available (see CTIO list). This telescope is often
undersubscribed, especially for bright time, so we can
sometimes exceed our official allocation.
0.9m telescope:
Optical photometry with 2K camera (13 arcminute field).
Many filters available (see CTIO list). Both traditional
observing and service observing are available, in a
week-on/week-off pattern. Traditional observers should
apply for a full week of observing. Service observing
is allocated mostly in full, or at the least half,
nights, so monitoring/ToO programs are hard to
accomodate on this telescope.
Available instruments are MiniMo, SparsePak, WHIRC, and Hydra. Note that WIYN instrument availability and scheduling will be impacted by commissioning of ODI. Please contact Marla Geha (Yale WIYN-SAC
representative) for the latest information.
Pre-proposals for WIYN are due on Friday, February 26, 2010.
Yale Keck time is open to faculty and postdocs. Postdocs are particularly encouraged to apply for Keck time.
Pre-proposals for Keck are due on Friday, February 26, 2010.
Information on available Keck instruments etc. can be found via the
Caltech call for proposals, at
www.astro.caltech.edu/~tac/obsforms/ and also directly at the Keck website.
SMARTS
WIYN
Keck