Re: scaling the sne back a little

[David Schade <david.schade@nrc.ca>]

Ray,

 As you point out, this is a very major cost. I see it as a drastic cutback.

   David

Ray Carlberg wrote:

> How could we scale back a little? For the supernovae, the sampling
> rate can't change without endangering the program. However, to be most
> valuable the sampling has to relatively uniform with no big
> gaps. Although the "poor weather" months of Jan and Feb are acceptable
> time to observe, the Sne program could, if absolutely necessary, be
> suspended for those months.  The sole purpose of this would be to
> lower the time request by about 15% (since when it is clear in those
> months, there are many dark hours!).  Introducing the hiatus does lead
> to a cost, which is that any Sne that are on the rise in late December
> are "lost". This would of course lower the total number of sne by a
> total amount of 15+(5-10)= 20-25% from the request (detailed modelling
> will be done next week.).
>
> This discussion shows a possible scale-back, but shows that the costs for
> synoptic observations are larger than the scale-back itself.