NOAO > Observing Info > Proposals > Hale Community Access
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NOAO > Observing Info > Proposals > Hale Community Access |
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As a result of NSF funding for NOAO's ReSTAR program, observing time is being allocated to the astronomical community on the 200-inch Hale telescope of the Palomar Observatory located in California. The current agreement will run for three years beginning in the 2010A semester. Caltech Optical Observatories(COO) is making up to 23 nights per year available to the US community under their agreement with NOAO.
Community access will continue in the upcoming 2012A semester, during which about ten classically-scheduled nights will be available to new programs. Any scientist may propose without regard to nationality or preferred access through other channels.
Community access time will be distributed over time such that users have the same opportunity for lunar phase and season that Caltech observers do (i.e., on average, no bias with respect to phase or observing season).
Currently, community access users may propose for the Double Spectrograph (red and blue channel optical spectrograph) and TripleSpec (NIR 1-2.5um spectrometer). In following years, NOAO and COO will agree upon an expanded set of capabilites to offer, subject to expected demand and input from the community.
Palomar Observatory maintains instrument pages on their website, including links to instrument manuals, etc. Please also check their page with observer information.
Time will be awarded through the usual NOAO proposal process, with the same proposal form, policies, and due dates as for other NOAO-coordinated facilities.
Investigators may request telescope time on any combination of facilities available through NOAO, including the 200-inch Hale telescope, in a single proposal. Proposals will be reviewed by the NOAO TAC, and those approved will be forwarded to Palomar Observatory for scheduling. Notifications of awarded time will be sent in conjunction with those for other NOAO-coordinated facilities.
Procedures and forms for applying for telescope time can be found at http://www.noao.edu/noaoprop/.
Dave Bell serves as NOAO contact for investigators with questions regarding community access to the 200-inch Hale telescope and proposal preparation. You may reach him by sending email to hale@noao.edu. For instrumentation questions (only), you may also directly contact those listed on the Palomar pages and/or the NOAO System Science Contact (Ron Probst for TripleSpec, Todd Boroson for Double Spectrograph).
All data obtained under this program may be placed in NOAO's data archives and made publicly available under the same ground rules as data obtained at NOAO telescopes.
Any publication that results from NOAO-allocated time on the 200-inch Hale telescope should acknowledge the NSF/NOAO ReSTAR program, in addition to a Hale/Palomar acknowledgment. The requested wording for ReSTAR acknowledgements is:
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NOAO is operated by the
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA),
Inc. under cooperative agreement with the
National Science Foundation.
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NOAO > Observing Info > Proposals > Hale Community Access |
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