2nd year Practicum

Submitted proposals

 

There are a total of 7 groups, with two groups (4 & 5) targeting the same galaxies.

 

 

The airmass of the targets is given in this PDF file, and their visibility (above airmass 1.56 or altitude 40 degrees), can be found in this PDF file.

 

Writing a telescope proposal

 

 A telescope generally consists of a scientific and a technical part - further sections might be present for some proposals but in the following I will only discuss the telescope proposal you shall write. We will refer to these as the scientific and technical justifications respectively. The slides provided (see below) contain some further details. The format of the telescope proposal must satisfy the following requirements:

 

  • The scientific justification shall be no more than one (1) page A4.
  • The technical justification shall be no more than one (1) page A4.
  • You can include up to two (2) pages with figures and bibliographic references to support your justification.
  • The proposal shall start with an abstract of up to 10 sentences.
  • The font size must be 11pt Times Roman.

 

The scientific justification

 

The aim of this is to tell the reader what question you want to address, what observational data you need for this and how this will be used to tackle the question.

 

In general the structure is a compressed version of a report. You start with an introduction which outlines what previous work has been done in this field and where your proposed science fits into this. This introduction, and indeed the justification in general, should be written at an accessible level - the person reading your proposal is unlikely to be an expert on what you are proposing.  Where necessary include the most relevant references

 

The introduction is also the logical place to introduce your topic which you then expand on and subsequently discuss the observations needed for your work. Here you typically focus on the physical quantities needed which are then translated into practical observing requirements in the technical justification.

 

The technical justification

 

This is where you provide all the technical details for your observing. In the scientific justification you would have provided e.g. the flux limit you need to reach, or the temporal stability needed. Here you translate this into how long you need to expose on the target, what filters you need to use etc.

 

 

The INT and the Wide Field Camera

 

We will be observing using the Wide Field Camera (WFC) which is a CCD imager working in the optical range. The WFC is mounted on the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT). This telescope in turn is part of the Isaac Newton Group of telescopes (ING), which is part of the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on the island of La Palma.

 

You will also find it useful to refer to this document which has some more details on the technical side of observing. As pointed out in that document this web-based exposure time estimation tool is very useful.

 

 

Questions for the proposal

 

  • What object do you want to observe, and why?
  • When is your object visible?
  • How often do you want to observe the object, and why?
  • Is the timing of the observations crucial?
  • Do the weather conditions matter? This could concern for instance the seeing, the transparency of the atmosphere and the photometric stability.
  • Is the effect of the moon a problem (since the moon will be up when we observe you need to deal with this).
  • What filters do you want to use and why?
  • What signal-to-noise ratio do you need and what integration time does that correspond to?
  • Do you need to watch out for saturation of the detector?
  • Do you need absolute or relative fluxes?
  • What is the position, magnitude, colour, size etc for your objects?
  • What kinds of calibration data do you need to reach your scientific goals?

 

 

Some pointers to tackle these questions are provided in the document linked above.

 

 

Useful links

  • staralt - This is the main program used to calculate the visibility of objects for observations with telescopes in the ING group but it can be used for other observatories as well.
  • JSkycalc. This is a graphical program that can provide a lot of useful information for your observing run. It is a modern version of probably the most widely used program for observing preparation, skycalc. There is an AstroBetter post discussing it in more details here.
  • ESO provides a range of tools on their Calendars and Calculators web page.
  • For those with a Mac iObserve is the Rolls Royce of observing planning - but it does cost real money (around €20) and is not needed for our observing run.
  • Filters for the WFC.
  • Exposure time calculator for ING.