Welcome to the 1998 CFHT users meeting. The meeting has been organised by the SAC and CFHT, and is benefiting from being held in conjunction with the CASCA 1998 meeting. We are combining the two meetings on day 3 with reviews and contributed papers on science with the CFHT. As current SAC chair, I open the meeting and invite all present to contribute their views at what is a crucial point of the history of the CFHT: It will soon be the small brother to the 8m telescopes that will begin operations within the next year. We are challenged to keep CFHT doing forefront science within this new secondary role. I request all presenters to allow plenty of time within that allocated to their topic, to discussion of the many important issues that face us.
The CFHT instrument plan is shown below, summarizing major new instruments and also ancillary systems and detectors. In the presentations and discussions of this first day we will work through most of this list, so this will serve as a very top level overview.
Note that the Megaprime project will take the bulk of the current instrument budget and time for the next few years. However, we need to look ahead to developments beyond that, other small instruments that might be included or partially funded elsewhere, and we also need to look at de-commissioning old instruments as they become obsolete or as budget restrictions make them impossible to support. The user community is invited to help define the next years of the CFHT and to maintain its scientific productivity as the era of the 8m telescopes begins. We are also looking forward beyond the instrument plan to possible major refurbishments or upgrades of the telescope a decade from now. This will be discussed in more detail tomorrow.
Of the current instrument list, there are delays in the CFHT12K and the OSIS IR camera. The KIR 1K camera is in full and successful use with AOB and the OASIS instrument has been commissioned, used by non-team scientists, and data have been processed. OASIS appears to have passed all these milestones with success. MONICA and the UH8K camera have been retired as they have been superseded.
| Year | Instruments | Other equipment |
| 1996 | AOB | |
| 1997 | KIR, Redeye rework | |
| 1998 | OASIS | Discontinue Monica, UH8K |
| CFHT12K | GenX computer system (part) | |
| AOB beamsplitters | TCS-IV, LAMA autofocus, | |
| EEV 2Kx4.5K CCD, Gumball upgrade | ||
| 1999 | OSIS + direct 1K IR | |
| OSIS IR-IFU ? | ||
| Fibre Coude link | ||
| 2000-01 | Decommission f/35, FTS, coude train | |
| 2002 | Megaprime | Full Gen-X |
| 2003-04 | Large IR camera? | |
| 2007 | Telescope upgrade? |
