The NOAO WIYN queue observing experiment hasn't been completely shutout during the "El Niņo" winter and spring of 1998, but it hasn't made much progress either. Semester 1998A has been more affected by bad weather than the three previous semesters that the queue program has been in full operation. By late April the queue program had used 208 of its 470 hours allocation (44%) but the dome was only open 38% of the time (80 hours). Few of these hours were photometric and, as a result, useful data has only been obtained for 10 of the 27 programs in the 1998A queue. Indeed, only two programs have received more than 10 hours worth of observations. Of 21 nights devoted to NOAO science programs at WIYN, 7 nights have been completely lost to weather and the dome has been open for substantially less than half of the night on six occasions. Both dark time and bright time programs have been affected equally. It is clear even at this early stage of the semester that programs with targets westward of RA = 13h have no chance of receiving data for all of their fields. Observations requiring photometric conditions and good seeing are the most affected by the weather pattern and almost no progress has been made on them.
We would dearly like to be notified of the disposition of the data that investigators have received from the NOAO WIYN queue program in previous semesters. Please send us preprints and/or reprints of any refereed papers that include data obtained with the WIYN telescope. Relevant publications should be sent to:
WIYN Queue Experiment
c/o Paul Smith
National Optical Astronomy Observatories
P.O. Box 26732
Tucson, AZ 85726-6732
Observing proposals for the 1998B semester (August 1998 - January 1999) have been received, and there has been a large increase in the number of extragalactic programs asking to use WIYN. 33 proposals will be reviewed by the KPNO extragalactic TAC. There were 19 galactic proposals and 1 solar system proposal submitted. In addition, 11 2HR Queue proposals were submitted. These proposals request a total of 135 nights of WIYN telescope time. The WIYN Queue program is typically allocated about 60 nights during a semester.
Paul Smith for the WIYN Queue Team
(Diane Harmer, Abhijit Saha, Daryl Willmarth)