scheduling...

[Christian Veillet <veillet@cfht.hawaii.edu>]

Bonjour

I started playing with what could be a schedule for the CFHLS.
Well, not too good! There is definitely an incompatibility between 
the need to get uninterrupted series of observations for 4 or 5 months
in a row and a set of locations well spread in RA.

It is difficult to observe nicely a field for 2:30 hours over more than 
5 months in a row. It works if the series of months is well centered on the 
visibility period (namely sidereal time = RA of the field in the middle of 
the series). 

Well, if we have two fields 4 hours apart, it is not going to work if we have
to have a break after 5 months to let another instrument be used for a dark run.


There are not many ways to fulfill the needs of the SNe survey:

1- Schedule MegaPrime every dark run of the year. Then, it makes sense to spread
the fields in RA, and we have a nice move from one field to another one with
a good uninterrupted series on each of the four fields. Queue works better and
the overall execution of the cfhls is going to be very smooth.

2- Schedule MegaPrime with breaks pre-scheduled according to the location of
the cfhls fields, and chose these fields by pairs close in RA (instead of 
spreading them as we did in our proposal). Each field would be observed once
every two nights, but not two on the same night (but rarely if needed for
making up for lost time). One wouldn't be able to observe two fields on the 
same night at the beginning or at the end of the MegaPrime period.

The way we have selected the fields, we have to go for 1. It is good seen from 
cfht, but I am not sure how it can be seen from SAC or the communities.
In fact, same comment from the pre-scheduling in 2...

Any comments/ideas?

Aloha

Christian