GeminiFocus July 2014 | Page 19

Fast Turnaround GHOST Over the next few months, Gemini staff will be preparing to launch the new Fast Turnaround proposal mode. This program will offer monthly proposal deadlines and a rapid review of proposals. Accepted programs will be ready for scheduling within a month of the proposals being received. The Fast Turnaround scheme will offer Gemini users new opportunities to follow up unexpected astronomical events or discoveries, carry out pilot studies, or quickly obtain the data needed to finish a Ph.D. thesis, among others. In April 2014, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy delivered to the Sydney-based Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) a signed contract for the design, building, testing, and commissioning of the Gemini High-resolution Optical SpecTrograph (GHOST, previously referred to as GHOS) –– for use on the twin 8-meter telescopes. AAO will have two partners on the project: the National Research Council Herzberg in Victoria, Canada, which will be designing and building the spectrograph portion of GHOST; and the Australian National University Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Canberra, which will be developing the instrument’s software. One novel aspect of the program is that Principal Investigators (PIs) will review each other’s proposals. Thus, submitting a proposal also commits the PI (or a co-investigator) to providing grades and brief written assessments of up to 10 proposals submitted during that round by other astronomers. Gemini staff will then use this combined assessment of scientific merit to create a “miniqueue” of programs that will be executed on three nights per month reserved for Fast Turnaround observations. The program’s design — including the peer review system — has been assessed by a committee of internal and external experts, and, in May 2014, the Gemini Board of Directors gave approval to launch a trial using 10 percent of the telescope time at Gemini North. (The remainder of the telescope time will continue to be available for regular proposals, Large and Long Programs, etc. for the foreseeable future.) During the rest of this year, we will be establishing the software and procedures necessary to run and monitor the program, in time for the first proposal deadline at the end of January 2015. More information will be made available as the program’s web pages are developed; readers may also be interested in the recent SPIE proceedings describing the design of the plan (available here). July 2014 Rounding out the project team roster are Gemini Operations and Development team members from both the north and south sites. They will work closely with their Australian and Canadian counterparts to ensure a smooth transition of this new instrument into Gemini operations. Work on the project’s Preliminary Design stage has been proceeding for the past couple of months. Last May, instrument technicians, engineers, and scientists gathered in Sydney, Australia, where they spent three days making significant progress. With an end of year 2014 goal to have the preliminary design ready for review, and a 3rd-quarter 2017 goal to be commissioning this new fiber-fed, bench-mounted spectrograph, the GHOST project team is on its way to providing this long-awaited capability to the Gemini community. Gemini Generation-4 Instrument #3 Project With develop