Gemini North News
At Gemini North, we took routine operations to
a high level — dedicating close to 95 percent of
2013 to science observations. Also, we were able
and happy to host two visiting instruments: the
Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (Steven
Howell, Principal Investigator (PI)) and the Texas
Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (John Lacy,
PI). Both instruments have unique capabilities
that enhance Gemini’s complement of facilityclass instruments. Beyond being used for the PI’s
dedicated programs, both visiting instruments
were offered to the user community while being
operated by the PI‘s teams. In the coming years,
we are looking forward to more groups bringing
their instruments or experiments to our stateof-the-art telescopes!
Operations Decisions
Driven by budget cuts, we reviewed the core
Observatory operations. We reflected on how
our users’ science could direct the way in which
we operate, rather than having our operations
constrain the users’ science. This concept generated many ideas. In particular, it led us to
consider adding two future proposal modes:
1) Large and Long programs that enable multiyear, high-impact ambitious projects; and 2) a
Fast Turnaround proposal scheme, allowing users to obtain data only a few weeks after submitting their proposals.
2
GeminiFocus
Large and Long programs have received the
go-ahead from the Gemini Board, and the first
call went out in December. This scheme also
led us to introduce “Priority Visiting Observing”
— a way to observe classically while mitigating
the risk of weather loss. Check it out at: http://
www.gemini.edu/node/11101?q=node/12096.
The Fast Turnaround scheme has been reviewed by our advisory committees and is now
being prototyped. We hope to introduce it by
the end of 2014.
We also recognized that more “post-observing”
support would be very beneficial to the user
community. While in-house efforts are being
spent, we also wanted to engage our users
in supporting each other