19 January 1997 marked the final night of the WIYN Queue Observing Experiment for the fall 1996 semester. Data were obtained on 43 of 50 nights awarded to the Queue by the WIYN Consortium (data were also obtained on 2 additional partial nights during NOAO T&E), though many of these nights were only partial. Of the complete nights lost to the Queue, 2 were to major equipment failures preventing use of the telescope and 5 were to weather. In addition, WIYN was successfully used for 1.5 nights of Director's Discretionary Time. All told, weather and technical problems resulted in the execution of Queue science programs during 55% of the time (53% of dark time and 61% of bright time). We estimate that about 10% of the available time was lost to a variety of technical problems. A more thorough breakdown of the WIYN Queue's progress during fall 1996 can be found at http://www.noao.edu/wiyn/obsprog.
All of the fall 1996 Queue programs have now been officially terminated and all remaining data should be distributed to the program PIs within a few weeks. If you are expecting to receive data from the WIYN Queue and have not by mid-February, please contact us at wiynq@noao.edu. We remind investigators whose programs were not completed or initiated during the semester that new proposals must be submitted for review by the TAC to reinstate these programs to the WIYN Queue.
Time lost to weather and technical problems resulted in 3 Long and 2 2HrQ "Best Effort" programs not being activated. The table summarizes the level of completion attained during the fall 1996 semester for the 34 observing programs allocated time.
The level of completion for a non-synoptic Long program was determined by dividing the number of Queue hours spent on the program by the number of hours allocated by the TAC. It is more difficult to determine the completion level of the two synoptic programs. One program required an observation during every Queue night, but the target was not accessible until about midway through the semester. We estimated the "completion level" of this program as simply the number of nights the target was observed divided by the total number of Queue nights that it could have been (a little over 80%). The other synoptic program included a non-synoptic portion and since this program used up nearly its entire allocation, it is classified as being completed.
Several 2HrQ programs were initiated but not completed. These were typically programs requiring excellent seeing conditions that were rarely attained during the fall semester. In fact, programs demanding seeing of 0.8" or better were also at a disadvantage because of an intermittent focus drift problem that at times made it difficult, if not impossible, to obtain the required image quality. During periods when the focus drift was apparent, the additional time required to re-focus substantially degraded observing efficiency. This problem remains undiagnosed, though it was not a problem during the final month of the semester.
Completed Fall 1996 WIYN Queue Observing Experiment
Level of Completion
Total 0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Long Programs
High Priority:
Standard 9 1 2 6
Synoptic 2 1 1
Best Effort: 7 3 2 1 1
2HrQ Programs
High Priority 7 4 3
Best Effort 9 2 2 5
Totals 34 5 2 8 4 15
The observing queues for the spring 1997 (February-July) semester have been constructed and the Queue observing program has been allocated 51 nights. The High Priority, Best Effort, and 2HrQ programs are listed in the "spring 1997" link from our home page. Below is a summary of the approved WIYN Queue programs for the spring 1997 semester.
Due to a large number of accepted proposals with essentially identical TAC grades, there is a slight oversubscription of both dark and bright time. This is mostly caused by the large number of programs in the Best Effort Queue. Proposers with programs in this queue should remember that their projects will only be initiated if time and conditions permit (see the spring 1997 "Queue Rules" at http://www.noao.edu/wiyn/obsprog/queue/S97/QRules.S97.html). Note that in fall 1996, only 30% of the requested hours in the Long Program Best Effort Queue were executed and none of these programs was actually completed. We hope to do better in the coming semester as telescope reliability is improved and if the weather is more cooperative. A concerted effort is underway to increase the technical reliability of the WIYN facility. Substantial progress in this area will greatly benefit the efficiency of the Queue program. The observing programs in the Best Effort Queue will be helped most by this eventuality as high-priority programs are completed in a more timely manner.
Another aspect of the spring 1997 semester of which investigators in the Best Effort Queue should be aware is that there are many high-priority programs with targets clustered around 13 hours in RA. As a consequence, it will be difficult to initiate Best Effort programs with targets near 13 hours unless we are very successful in completing high-priority programs early in the semester.
We would like to gauge the impact of the NOAO WIYN Queue Experiment on astronomical research. Feel free to send us any preprints or reprints of work that includes data obtained at WIYN. These can be sent to:
WIYN Queue Experiment
c/o Paul Smith
National Optical Astronomy Observatories
P.O. Box 26732
Tucson, AZ 85726-6732
If you have questions, suggestions, or comments concerning any aspect of the WIYN Queue Observing Experiment, please send e-mail to wiynq@noao.edu.
WIYN Queue Observing Experiment: Spring 1997
# of programs Hours requested
Dark Bright Dark Bright
Long Programs
High Priority 7 4 147 95
Best Effort 10 3 179 44
2HrQ Programs
High Priority 7 14
Total 24 7 340 139
Available Hours 330 123
Paul Smith, for the WIYN Queue Team (Di Harmer,
Alex Macdonald, Dave Silva, Daryl Willmarth