CFHT Proposal Information

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New Proposal System

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.

Instrument Availability

• MOS/ARGUS: We are following SAC's advice that MOS/ARGUS be decommissioned. OASIS now provides very similar capability.
• Redeye: The Redeye camera failed in December and, while we are looking at options for reviving the camera, we are following SAC's advice to not offer Redeye for direct imaging. The new CFHT-IR camera will provide much better performance when it is available in Semester 2000 I.
• OSIS IR: Since this depends on the Redeye camera it will not be available in 1999 II but will be available with the new CFHT-IR camera in 2000 I.

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Important Note Regarding FTS BEAR:

PUEO (Contact Jean-Luc Beuzit (beuzit@cfht.hawaii.edu) for information)

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).

More detailed information on  performance and results are available on the KIR and the PUEO Web pages

More results and information will be posted as they become available.

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 sizes are 0.035 arcsec in the infrared with KIR and 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.

Note:

The default configuration for Skycat uses a connection to the ESO Web site. Canadian users will probably want to set the configuration to use the CADC site as this will be faster. To do this, issue the following command before starting SKYCAT:

 

CFH12k

All observations with CFH12k in the Semester 1999 II will be carried out in Queue Scheduled/Service Observing mode. PIs wishing to observe in classical mode must include a justification for this request in their proposals.

We have  received the following filters for CFH12K: V,  R, I, H-alpha off band (6428/80), TiO(7770/180) and z' (>8500).  We have not yet received the B,  H-alpha (6575/80) and  CN(8120/180).

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.

MOS (Contact Christian Veillet (veillet@cfht.hawaii.edu for information)

We now have an autofocus for LAMA (the machine which cuts the masks). This will allow 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-V (Contact Christian Veillet (veillet@cfht.hawaii.edu for information)

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.

OASIS (Contact Pierre Martin (martin@cfht.hawaii.edu) for more information)

Information on OASIS can be found at the CFHT Web site which includes the latest news.

6. GECKO (Contact Dennis Crabtree (crabtree@cfht.hawaii.edu) for more information)

There is no shortage of potential CCDs available for Gecko in 1999II. Beside Loral3 which is a thick 2K x 2K device with 15 micron pixels we also have Loral5 which is a thinned 2K x 2K device with 15 micron pixels. We also expect to have EEV1 available in 1999I. EEV1 is a 2K x 4.5K device with 13.5 micron pixels. A short summary of device characteristics is:
 

• Loral3: Low Q.E. in blue but the only device which will not have fringing in the red. Read noise around 9 electrons
• Loral5: High Q.E. from 3000A redward but shows significant fringing beyond 7000A. Read noise around 9 electrons
• EEV2: While we have not yet tested this device we expect it will have high Q.E. from  at least 3500A redward. We also expect this device to have fringing in the red but until we test it we won't know the amplitude. This device should also have a read noise of ~2 electrons and will have the advantage of 4.5K (13.5 micron) pixels in the dispersion axis.

FTS and BEAR (Contact Stefan Charpinet  (charpine@cfht.hawaii.edu) for more information)

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)

Detectors

Available detectors

CCDs

• Loral3, 2k x 2k thick CCD, 15 micron pixels
• STIS2, 2k x 2k thin CCD, 21 micron pixels

These two CCDs are available for use on AOB V, MOS, OSIS, and Gecko.  STIS2 is the recommended CCD for use with OSIS.

• Loral5 is thinned 2k x 2k device which shows CTE problems that make it unusable for anything but Gecko. This device has Q.E. of about 40% at 3200A and over 80% at 6000A.

• EEV2 is a thinned 4.5k x 2k device with 13.5 micron pixels. We are commissioning this device in the next couple of months and it is planned to offer it for MOS, OASIS and Gecko.

Our long term goal is to have dedicated detectors for each instrument. After EEV2 there are two more EEV devices to put into service. Once all three are available we plan on having one dedicated to each of MOS, OASIS and GECKO. STIS2 will then be dedicated to OSIS V with Loral3 being used in situations where fringing in the red with the other detectors is unacceptable.
 

IR Detectors

• Redeye  incorporates a 256 x 256 Rockwell NICMOS chip, 40 micron pixels, and a 1.7:1 scaling factor.  It is only available for  FTS/BEAR mode (see important note).

• The KIR camera which incorporates a 1024 x 1024 Rockwell NICMOS chip with 18.5 micron pixels is available for use with AOB.

Consult the CFHT Detectors page for more information on the detectors which are currently available.

CFHT web