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US Gemini Program (1Mar96)
(from USGP, NOAO Newsletter No. 45, March 1996)

                   How Will You Get Time on Gemini?

The US Gemini Program, a division of NOAO, will continue to be the US
community's interface to the Gemini telescopes after construction is
completed and scientific observing begins. The USGP will have the
following responsibilities in the operations phase of Gemini:

	Distribute information to the US community about Gemini
	facilities and instrumentation.

	Supply expert advice/support for observing proposal
	preparation.

	Solicit observing proposals and perform first pass technical
	evaluation.

	Organize and run a national Time Allocation Committee and
	organize US participation in an international TAC.

	Organize and run a national Gemini Users committee and organize
	US participation in an international Gemini Users committee.

	Supply data reduction software and data reduction support to
	the US community for all Gemini instruments.

	Supplement Gemini's support for observing programs through
	"instrument specialists," especially for US-built instruments.

	Provide or facilitate US community access to the Gemini data
	archive.

	Investigate the feasibility and desirability of operating a
	remote observing station connected by high-bandwidth links to
	the two Gemini sites.

	Provide assistance to Gemini and the US community for
	queue-scheduled observations.

	Perform public relations and outreach involving Gemini
	facilities and science.

	Coordinate and manage the US-allocated Gemini instruments. This
	includes developing community participation in defining new
	instrumental capabilities.

The USGP will thus have most of the responsibilities that go along with
operating a national facility aside from the actual operation and
maintenance of the site itself. The USGP will continue to operate from
Tucson; high-bandwidth links to the sites will permit frequent
interaction with the international Gemini staff of both scientific and
engineering natures.

The balance among US community interests, those of the other partner
countries, and those of Gemini as a whole make the operation of this
facility and US interaction different from any other aspect of NOAO's
program. Despite the apparent commonality between many of the US Gemini
responsibilities and similar activities which KPNO and CTIO perform for
their own telescopes, this balance provides constraints that will
affect how these responsibilities are carried out. For instance, the
Gemini Science Committee has resolved that at least half of the time on
the Gemini telescopes will be queue scheduled, but each country will
maintain its own ranked list of programs for the queue. Thus, decisions
about which programs are queue-scheduled, what the distribution of
program sizes is, and even the frequency with which the ranked list is
updated are left to each country to decide for the benefit of its own
community.

Over the next year, the USGP will be starting to develop detailed plans
for implementing the various parts of its operations phase mission.
Some of the decisions will involve experiments under way at NOAO, such
as the WIYN queue. Some of them will involve direct feedback solicited
from the community, such as the plan for defining the Phase 2
instrumentation, mentioned in the accompanying article. In all cases,
community participation and discussion are essential.

  	    Fred Gillett Appointed Gemini Project Scientist

The Gemini Project recently announced that Fred Gillett has been
appointed Gemini Project Scientist. Fred has served as the Interim
Project Scientist for a year following the move of Matt Mountain from
Project Scientist to Project Director. Prior to directly working for
the Gemini Project, Fred was a member of the international Gemini
Science Committee and Associate Project Scientist in the US Gemini
Program.

		  US Gemini Instrumentation Status

The US Gemini Program has recently accepted the task of managing the
Near- and Mid-Infrared Instrument Programs for the international Gemini
Project. Scientific instrumentation remains a responsibility and
budgetary item of the Gemini Project but US Gemini Program personnel
will support the Project by working directly with the instrument teams
to coordinate the many design and interface issues common to these
instruments as well as to help resolve conflicts with instrument
schedules, budgets and performance. The optical instrumentation for
Gemini is provided by the United Kingdom and Canada. Progress on these
programs was discussed in the December issue of the Gemini Newsletter
available on the World Wide Web at http://www.gemini.edu/.

Near Infrared Imager: The University of Hawaii work on the imager,
under the direction of Klaus Hodapp, continues to press on towards a
preliminary design review scheduled for June of this year. Inclusion of
an on-instrument wavefront sensor is being investigated.

Near Infrared Spectrograph: The NOAO team started last October and are
working towards a conceptual design review in March of this year. The
optical and mechanical design activity is nearly complete. Jay Elias
moved to Tucson from CTIO to take responsibility for the scientific
performance of the instrument and Dan Vukobratovich joined NOAO from
Optical Sciences/University of Arizona to lead the engineering effort.

Mid Infrared Imager: The plans to procure this instrument have been
developed and an initial announcement of opportunity was released in
January at the AAS meeting in San Antonio and mailed to those who had
expressed an interest. Anyone else interested in receiving the
announcement should contact Kathy Wood by e-mail to wood@noao.edu or
call (520)318-8175. The announcement states that all interested parties
wishing to receive the Request for Proposal submit their name to the US
Gemini Program by 7 March 1996. Proposals will be solicited in the
spring of this year to perform conceptual design studies of the
instrument. Following the conceptual design studies, a second and
separate solicitation will be made to select an institution to perform
the final design and instrument fabrication.

Next Generation Instrumentation: In spite of the fact that we are still
initiating many of the Phase 1 instrument procurement activities, we
are beginning to think seriously about the following generations of
instruments. Within the proposed Gemini operations budget is a
substantial amount of funding aimed at instrument and telescope
upgrades and new instruments. We are concerned that the process should
be one in which the communities initiate the ideas, not merely respond
to requests to build instruments with given specifications. Our plan,
still preliminary, for how this will happen includes an opportunity for
anyone in the community to propose any instrument, together with an
annual meeting to discuss the scientific motivations for additions to
the instrument complement. We are trying to formulate a process which
is both responsive to the desires of the community and encourages
innovative and creative ideas in instrumentation. Announcements about
how you can participate in this program will be forthcoming in the
NOAO Newsletter and through other channels.

Kathy Wood, Todd Boroson

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