News from Gemini

by Stéphanie Côté, Canadian Gemini Office, NSI, NRC

Start of Large and Long Programs at Gemini

We are very pleased to announce this new opportunity on Gemini, many of us at the CGO, on the Gemini STAC and Board past and present have worked hard to see this become reality. Large and long programs (hereafter LPs) are Principal Investigator-defined and -driven programs that, as a guideline, either require significantly more time than a partner typically approves for a single program or extend over two to six semesters, or both. Large programs are expected to promote collaborations across the partnership’s communities, to have significant scientific impact, and normally to provide a homogeneous data set, potentially for more general use. The participating partners (US, Canada, Australia, and Argentina) will make available for LPs up to 20% of their time at each Gemini telescope over each of the next 6 semesters from the start of LP execution.
While Principal Investigators (PIs) of LPs must be based in an institution of one of the participating partner countries, there is no restriction on Co-Investigators. Potential investigators shall be encouraged to collaborate across the participating partnership. The submitted scientific proposals will be evaluated by one single TAC, the Gemini Large Program Time Allocation Committee (LPTAC). The Committee shall have six members from the US, two from Canada, one from Australia, and one from Argentina. Additional members may be appointed by the Observatory in order to balance the scientific expertise in the committee. The LPTAC shall be selected after Letters of Intent are reviewed, to provide relevant scientific expertise and to minimize conflicts of interest.
The schedule will allow the first LPs to begin execution during the 2014B semester.
The basic timeline is:
• December 1, 2013 — call for proposals was issued, including complete proposal requirements
• February 3, 2014 — Letters of Intent due
• March 31, 2014 — Proposals due

The Large Program PIs and Co-Is are expected to visit Gemini a) for Gemini to learn from them and to optimally support them, b) for them to learn about Gemini operations in order to optimally plan their observations and their data reduction, whatever mode of observation they are using. Three modes of observations are available to LPs: classical, priority visiting observing, or queue. In Classical mode, The program is scheduled on specific dates, and the PI or a team member comes to Gemini to observe that program on those dates, accepting the variability of weather. In the Priority visiting observing mode, the PI or team member comes to Gemini, prepared to observe either their own program if the conditions are sufficiently good, or to execute approved queue programs if the conditions are too poor for the LP. The LP will be charged only for time devoted to the program, and additional observations may be made by Gemini staff or other observers of the queue during the semester.

Letters of Intent to propose a LP must be received by email to largeprograms@gemini.edu by February 3, 2014.
Letters should include the information below:
• Title of Project
• PI with full name of institution and contact information (phone & email)
• Co-Is with full names of institution
• Broad scientific overview of the program (500 word limit)

The Letters of Intent are intended to allow for the selection of the allocation committee with minimal conflict of interest and applicable scientific expertise. Secondly, the description of the proposal program will allow for a review of the program in light of technical and operational constraints. Please keep this in mind when composing a Letter of Intent to ensure that relevant material is included.

Proposals for LPs are due March 31, 2014. Full proposal information and materials will be released with the normal Gemini 2014B Call for Proposals approximately one month before the deadline. Proposals for LPs must be completed with the Gemini Phase I Tool (PIT). Please consult the full announcement for all the details.


New Observing Tool for 2014A

For the PIs who have received their notifications of succesful programs for 2014A, you will have noticed new instructions concerning the Observing Tool (OT). There have been some major changes, for the best, since the last version, and a new version must be downloaded and installed for preparing your 2014A PhaseII.
The major differences are:
• in the way you first access your program, this is now done with an authentification key entered only once, instead of requesting a password at each use;
• there are no longer cluncky and slow 'fetch' and 'store' , instead you just need to click on the 'sync' button to activate the sync mechanism that copies your version into the Gemini database.
The new OT version also allows for several poeple to work on the same PhaseII at the same time. When a user will 'sync' their version they will get notified if by chance the same node was modified by another user at the same time (a node being one element of an observations, eg: the conditions constraints, or the Target component).
We strongly encourage you to watch the video tutorials for the new OT. If you are still confused please get in touch with your NGO contact (if you have not managed to dowload your program your NGO contact is also listed in the email notification you received from Gemini about your time award) and we'll help you navigate through the new OT.