Speaking of modest resources, all three
committees recognized the critical impor-
tance of not only maintaining the current
level of funding, but of stepping up efforts
to expand the Partnership and increasing
both our operating and development bud-
gets. Looking for new partners has always
been a Board prerogative, but at this meet-
ing the Board directed the Observatory
to take the lead. We fully intend to do so,
as our recent efforts with Israel and Korea
demonstrate.
Another common theme brought up by all
three committees was the strategic impor-
tance of adaptive optics and the recogni-
tion that this is a real strength for Gemini.
In the months ahead, we will step up our
efforts to restore the Gemini Multi-conju-
gate adaptive optics System (GeMS) to its
intended performance, and improve Altair,
Gemini North’s adaptive optics system. The
STAC further recommended, and the Board
approved, to explore options to move
GeMS to the North, once the Gemini High-
resolution Optical SpecTrograph (GHOST)
and OCTOCAM become fully operational
in the South. This is a bold suggestion, but
one that does make a great deal of sense
for many reasons, including ensuring that
GeMS is guaranteed the time it needs at
the telescope, and giving a unique capabil-
ity and a new purpose to Gemini North.
Changes to Large and Long
Programs
Since 2014, Gemini has enabled Large and
Long Programs (LLPs), via a pool of time
contributed by participating partners. The
aim of LLPs is to produce “flagship” science
by granting major allocations of time to
programs that are either large (in the sense
that they exceed what one would normally
expect the national Time Allocation Com-
mittees (TACs) to allocate), or long (span-
January 2018
ning multiple semesters), or both. However,
while we have achieved completion rates
comparable to those in the regular queue
for most of these programs, a formal tar-
get completion rate has been missing. This
leaves Principal Investigators uncertain re-
garding what to expect, and is inconsistent
with the “flagship” designation.
At the recent STAC meeting, we asked the
committee to help us resolve this problem.
They agreed that for LLPs in Band 1 a target
completion rate of at least 80% should be
guaranteed. As discussed in the current LLP
Announcement of Opportunity, if a Band-1
LLP reaches the end of its term (the set of se-
mesters over which it was granted time) and
is less than 80% complete, we will extend it
automatically semester by semester until it
reaches that mark. LLPs at term with more
than 80% completion, and Band-2 LLPs, still
have the option of formally requesting an ex-
tension via the LLP TAC. This new policy won’t
apply to Target of Opportunity programs, and
it won’t be backdated to existing LLPs.
An End to Rollover
The process of “rolling over” designated
queue programs until they are complete
has been a feature of Gemini’s operations
for many years. However, it added a sig-
nificant degree of complication and guess-
work in semester planning, was not well
understood by Principal Investigators or
even by Time Allocation Committee (TAC)
members, and was not applied by all par-
ticipants.
Recognizing the benefit that rollover
brought for programs in Band 1, we have
been discussing, over the course of a num-
ber of Operations Working Group meetings,
the possibility of replacing it with some-
thing simpler (or removing it altogether).
By August 2017, we agreed on a proposal:
to replace the current rollover system, in
GeminiFocus
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