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You may be interested in increasing your chances of having your proposal scheduled by consulting a recent article in the Information Bulletin which discusses the oversubscription factors as a function of month in the semester. The oversubscription factors are lower for August and December/January. More details are available.
CFH12K will be NOT be operated in Queue Scheduled/Service Observing mode in Semester 2000 I. Please consult the Queue Scheduling pages for information regarding this program. CFHT expects to provide this capability for Semester 2000 II.
The University of Hawaii Department of Meteorology and the Institute of Astronomy have hired a research meteorologist for a new initiative in support of astronomical operations on Mauna Kea. Dr. Rick Knabb started in January to provide detailed forecasts for Mauna Kea. The scope of the forecasts has steadily increased with the eventual goal of predicting the seeing. Rick is using one of Subaru's supercomputers to run detailed models that include a grid over the Big Island with 1 km. resolution and the vertical topography.
For the infrared, the KIR camera built by the Universite
de Montreal and CFHT will be available. KIR worked very well during recent
runs. KIR has a readnoise of approximately 20 electrons and a readout time of
9 seconds (with double-correlated sampling and writing data to disk).
Pixel sizes are 0.035 arcsec in the infrared with
KIR.
More detailed information on performance and results are available on the KIR and the PUEO Web pages
For observations in the visible, FOCAM and a standard CCD are available. There are two modes available for FOCAM with AOB with and without a focal enlarger.Pixel scales are 0.022 or 0.044 arcsec in the visible for Loral 3 (0.031 or 0.061 arcsec for STIS2), with and without the focal enlarger respectively.
Typically, sources up to R=15 magnitude make efficient guide stars to compensate wavefront distortion in the infrared, where images of 0.1 arcsec are usually obtained at K. It is important to note that fainter guide stars can be used (up to R=16.5) but are less effective for wavefront correction. During these last runs images in K of 0.3" FWHM were obtained with guide stars of R=15.7 at distances of 25" from the science object. Normally, the guide star should be located within a circle of 15 to 30 arcsec radius, centered on the object of interest, to maintain optimal performance within the isoplanatic patch. In the visible, guide stars up to 13th magnitude provide a substantial FWHM improvement (by a factorbetween 2 and 4). A PSF calculator is available which accounts for reference star magnitude, distance of the reference star from the science target and the bandpass of the observation.
A useful tool for determining whether you have a suitable reference star for your science object is SKYCAT. SKYCAT allows you to display Digital Sky Survey images, overlay objects from various catalogs and display information about these objects. For AOB observations, the USNO catalog which contains objects down to ~20th mag. can be used to identify potential guide stars. Information on SKYCAT can be found at either ESO or the CADC.
We have received the following filters for CFH12K: B, V, R, I, H-alpha (6575/80), H-alpha off band (6428/80), TiO(7770/180), z' (>8500). We have not yet received the CN(8120/180) but this should be received within the next month.
It is important to point out that the lead time for ordering filters for CFH12K is long enough (6-8 months) that one cannot wait until observing time is awarded before ordering specialty filters.
We now have autofocus for LAMA (the mask-cutting machine) and this has been working very well. This allows people to cut masks without having to manually focus the laser as it moves over the mask.
A summary of the grisms and filters available for MOS is available.
The ARGUS mode of MOS is no longer offered.
OSIS fast guiding is now working reliably (last two sets of observing runs). On a recent run with OSIS-V, theobserver obtained images with 0.39" FWHM using the fast guiding. The user interface for controlling the guiding has been simplified and the link to the TCS is now automated.
Full information on the grisms
and filters
available with OSIS-V is available.
Information on OASIS can be found at the CFHT Web site which includes the latest news.
There is no shortage of potential CCDs available for Gecko in 2000 I. Beside Loral3 which is a thick 2K x 2K device with 15 micron pixels have EEV2 available. EEV2 is a 2k x 4.5k device with 13.5 micron pixels. A short summary of device characteristics is:
A new IR2 beamsplitter was successfully installed in July which will allow operation in the 2.5 - 5.5 micron region with the InSb detector. A new thermal control system for the laser was implemented in January to improve the laser stability. This proved to be very successful during the January runs, even in fairly severe conditions.
CFHT cannot offer support for the BEAR reduction software at this point. Anyone requiring observing assistance for their complete run or assistance in using the BEAR reduction software should contact Jean-Pierre Maillard (maillard@iap.fr)
Our long term goal is to have dedicated detectors for each instrument.
Consult the CFHT Detectors
page for more information on the detectors which are currently available.