PATT ITAC Report for Semester 99A

1. Introduction

This document details the allocations for telescope time made by the ITAC for the semester 99A (1st February 1999 - 31st July 1999).

2. Allocations

The individual partner TAGs hold meetings in their respective countries prior to the PATT session to assess applications deemed by the JCMT Board rule to be from their own country. At these meetings informal numbers of shifts are nominated for each application in a priority order. The Chairpersons of each TAG bring their respective lists to the PATT where the ITAC combine the awards, include discussion of the engineering and commissioning requirements, and assess the International applications. The final allocations of shifts are made by the ITAC.

Applications considered            

UK status#               77
Canadian status#         48 
Netherlands status       23 
International status     24 
University of Hawaii      9 
TOTAL:                  181 

# 8 UK starred applications & 2 Canadian carry-overs have been included in this total.

The PATT meeting was held at the Falcon Hotel, Stratford, UK on 9th & 10th December 1998.

It should be noted that if the PI on an application is a JCMT staff member based in Hilo, then the application is assessed by the appropriate national TAG. However, by Board rule, International status is given to any application where the only named collaborator from any partner country is a JCMT staff member. International applications are assessed by the ITAC members at their meeting.

Time Available  (in 16-hour nights)                        

No. of nights in semester 98B      181.0 
Engineering & Commissioning         41.0 
University of Hawaii (10%)          13.5 
Director's discretionary use         4.0 
Available for PATT science:        122.5 

The above table indicates the order in which nights are removed from the total available for the semester. The table below indicates the allocations using the JCMT Board formula for attributing applications to countries.

Awards (in 16-hour nights)            

UK status                  54.3
Canadian status            23.6 
Netherlands status         17.4 
International status       27.2 
University of Hawaii       13.5 
TOTAL allocation:         136.0 

3. Designated Service and/or Fallback time

Allocations for this semester are:

CDN = 4.0 shifts allocated;

NL = up to 24 hours set as Nlflex;

UK = up to 31 shifts in the UKflex fallback program;

INT = up to 24 hours as INTflex.

4. Non-standard Instrumentation

SPIFI (South Pole Imaging Fabry-perot Interferometer) is a new visiting instrument from the Cornell group. Destined for the South Pole towards the end of 1999, it is scheduled for installation in early April with several astronomical runs following during the last two weeks of the month. SPIFI will be located on the right-hand Nasmyth (opposite SCUBA).

The Canadian FTS system is a regular visitor. It is to be scheduled for several shifts in early June mornings. The FTS equipment will also be located on the right-hand Nasmyth once SPIFI has been removed.

Instrument distribution             

A-band                  12% 
B-band                  13% 
C-band                   4%
D-band                   1%
FTS                      1%
SPIFI                    4%
SCUBA polarimeter        8%
SCUBA                   57% 

5. Applications with Long-Term Status

M/98B/C15 was extended for a further allocation of 8 shifts in 99A to continue the deep survey program on CFRS fields. M/98A/C40 was given an allocation of 1 shift in 99A to make further studies of the asteroid Pallas which were partially lost due to instrument problems in the earlier semester.

M/98B/N02 was extended for a further allocation of up to 3 shifts in 99A to complete their studies of high-z dusty starburst galaxies.

M/99A/U01 was given a further 4 shifts in 99B to continue the dusty disk observations conditional on detections from their 99A allocation. M/99A/U42, mapping of the star formation in the Perseus molecular cloud, was given a further 6 shifts in 99B conditional on maps from their 99A allocation. M/99A/U45, the UK 8mJy SCUBA/ISO survey, was given a further 8 shifts in 99B with 16 shifts spread over 00A/00B conditional on source identifications. M/98B/U30 was given a renewed further 5 shifts in 99B to complete observations of the Galactic Centre region. All of the above extensions are subject to satisfactory progress reports to the relevant TAGs from 99AB observations.

6. Short Baseline Interferometry

There will be no interferometry session during semester 99A.

7. Engineering & Commissioning

A significant period of time has been set aside in May to install a new central bearing on the antenna. This period of heavy engineering is extremely complicated and a further period of contingency has been attached in case of complications. Should the contingency not be required for E&C work, it will be distributed to PATT observing in the appropriate ratio.

Some shifts have been set aside for further commissioning of the heterodyne instruments. RxA3, although having completed its instrument commissioning, is in need of astronomical work such as beam maps/shapes and efficiency measures. It is possible that some new tunerless mixers may be available for installation later in the semester. RxB3 is also scheduled for a mixer upgrade to the tunerless variety in the latter part of the semester. The weather has not been too kind to the commissioning of the high-frequency instrument RxW and further shifts are required for that purpose. The D-band section of RxW is also due for a mixer upgrade in June.

The FTS requires a single setup shift to enable alignment and connections to be made on the Nasmyth platform prior to their observing time. For this semester the FTS run is preceded by a lengthy commissioning and observing run with SPIFI. More details of SPIFI will be available elsewhere.

In addition there is commissioning time for both SCUBA and for its imaging polarimeter. Several of the shifts from the previous semester, critical for complete commissioning of the instruments, have been lost due to poor weather.

A major upgrade is planned for SCUBA in July which necessitates taking the instrument out of service for almost the entire month. Whilst not requiring any E&C time at present, this period will require considerable careful planning to ensure sufficient heterodyne projects are available to keep the observatory operating. It may be appropriate to put out a call for heterodyne only applications sometime later in the semester to fill any gap.

The MPI group were offered 3 engineering shifts plus 2 DDT shifts to install and commission their single mixer 800 GHz system (E-band) but, having learned that they had not obtained PATT observing time in addition, they later declined the offer. They may apply again for semester 99B.

8. Fallback Programmes

A number of applications have been approved by the ITAC to be included in the schedule should the weather not be appropriate for the primary observations on any night. All applicants (allocated and fallback) have been requested to submit a completed template as soon as possible so their observations can be included on the queue system.

Applicants have again been notified that those with starred proposals who have not submitted a completed template by the end of the first month of the semester (28th February) will lose the starred status of the application.

9. The Flex Systems

There remains an outstanding 17.5 shifts of starred applications from semester 98B carried over into this semester. The UK TAG again set aside a total of 31 shifts designated as Ukflex. The intention is that each high-frequency allocation be extended by typically 50% using UKflex time, thus increasing the chance of obtaining suitable weather to complete the high-frequency program. Under weather conditions unsuitable for the high-frequency observing, the current observers or staff scientist would undertake observations from the UKflex list in a serviced mode and in the scientific priority ordering given by the UK TAG. Successful applicants on the UKflex fallback list have been informed that they have to submit complete templates for their observations but that there is no guarantee that any part of their program will be done during the semester.

A flexible system is already in operation by the Netherlands community. This works extremely effectively with all allocated projects being placed in a scientifically prioritised queue and flexed against all other projects in the queue.

The Canadian community began a flexibly queued scheme starting this semester. Although no shifts have explicitly been designated as Cnflex, there is a list of prioritised fallback projects, and an understanding that observers will perform fallback observations should the weather not be appropriate for their own project. There is as yet no mechanism for returning time to the observer at a later point in the semester.

The International queues are often difficult to flex due to their short nature. However considerable flexibility can be achieved by carefully abutting International shifts onto larger blocks from other partners.

From semester 99A onwards the University of Hawaii is operating its own completely flexible system with very little input from or to the JCMT staff. All observational details are kept by the UH applicants and the observations are all conducted by the JCMT Fellow who is present at the telescope for the duration of the requested blocks of time.

10. Electronic Submission

The current scheme continues to be improved. Within 48 hours of the deadline almost all UK, Canadian, Netherlands and International sets of applications were on-line at the JAC with 2 hardcopies produced. Only 2 applications remain in non-electronic form despite prompting. Less than 10 hardcopies were posted to Swindon, and all of these were later obtained in electronic postscript. The JCMT application template (PATT3) has been modified for use by ALL applicants so that all partners have a similar postscript format.

The UH applications do not conform to the electronic system and continue to be collected at the UH and posted to the JAC as hardcopy.

11. Procedures for Semester 99B

The deadline for semester 99B (1st August 1999 through 31st January 2000) applications is 31st March 1999 for ALL applicants. This deadline encompasses applications for all available instrumentation on the JCMT (RxA3, RxB3, RxW, SCUBA, and the SCUBA imaging polarimeter).