SMARTS CONSORTIUM BEGINS OPERATING THE CTIO SMALL TELESCOPES
SMARTS CONSORTIUM BEGINS OPERATING THE CTIO SMALL TELESCOPES
At time of writing, the SMARTS Consortium is a week away from the Feb 1 2003 start to their operation of the CTIO 0.9-m, 1.3-m and 1.5-m telescopes. CTIO has built an adaptor for Andicam on the 1.3-m telescope, then installed and tested a new CCDTV guide camera. During October-November 2002 similar new cameras were installed at the 1.5-m and 0.9-m. In mid January Bruce Atwood (OSU) installed a new Fairchild 2K CCD in Andicam, replacing the dead Loral 2K, while a team led by Darren DePoy (OSU) is in charge of moving the instrument from the 1.0-m to the 1.3-m. In the meantime the 1.3-m Queue observers have been gaining familarity with the telescope, and also helping with a few changes needed elsewhere, such as altering arrangements in the 1.5-m control room to suit single-person operation.

The telescopes have been scheduled by the Yale support team, led by SMARTS Principal Scientist Charles Bailyn. For semesters 2003A and 2003B NOAO users are entitled to one third of the telescope time, the rest goes to Chile (10%) and the consortium members: AMNH, STScI, OSU, SUNY-SB, Georgia State, Northern Arizona University, and Yale.

NOAO Users applying for time on the small telescopes for 2003B should be aware that the 0.9-m was heavily oversubscribed in 2003A, so a good proposal is neccessary! Again, all 0.9-m proposals should be for seven nights, and given that every second week is Service Observing, please state on your proposal whether having your observations done by a service observer would be acceptable. A decision on which programs will be done by the service observer will be made at scheduling time. Also, although all day-day operations of the telescopes will be directed by Charles Bailyn and the Yale operations team, visiting observers will see the familar faces of Arturo Gomez or Edgardo Cosgrove doing their usual efficient job of making the small telescopes operate smoothly. Alan Whiting is the CTIO astronomer responsible for looking after the interests of NOAO users observing on the small telescopes, please contact him if need be.

Please note, the SMARTS consortium is looking for one or two more partners. If you have a large project that could use observing time on these telescopes, and could support the project at a level of $50-$100K per year, then please contact Charles Bailyn.

At Proposal time, see

http://www.noao.edu/noaoprop/help/facilities.html

for details and 2003B proposal information.

THE SMARTS TELESCOPES (1.5m, 1.3m, 0.9m) ARE DESCRIBED AT http://www.ctio.noao.edu/telescopes/telescopes.html

A global view of CTIO facilities, and a look to the future is found at http://www.ctio.noao.edu/telescopes/TheFuture/crystal_ball.html

which is regularly updated. SMARTS will develop its own WWW pages shortly.

Alistair Walker

Posted: 23 January 2003