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Instruments to Retire from Service (1Sep94) (from KPNO, NOAO Newsletter No. 39, 1 September 1994) As part of KPNO's long-term effort to control and even reduce costs while continuing to provide both competitive instrumentation and a broad range of scientific capabilities, we are retiring several of our older, less used instruments. The reason for these retirements is to reduce the overall workload to permit KPNO technical staff to maintain the highest possible performance standards for our most popular and most productive instruments. We continue to strive to reduce operating costs by increasingly specializing each telescope to serve a more limited range of scientific programs. Nonetheless, KPNO continues to offer a broad range of observing capabilities through our ensemble of telescopes. Effective 1 February 1995, the status of the following instruments will change: 4-m Cryogenic Camera - Reduced availability 4-m Fourier Transform Spectrometer - Service Observing Only 2.1-m Fiber Optic Echelle Spectrograph - Visitor Instrument (see accompanying article) 2.1-m White Spectrograph - Retired Infrared Instrumentation - Restricted to particular telescopes If these instrumentation changes cause substantial hardship to your observing program, please contact us and we will try to help find viable alternatives to meet your needs. As the WIYN telescope comes on line, we will be reviewing further the best approaches to CCD direct imaging. KPNO currently offers optical imaging capabilities on four telescopes: the 4-m, the 2.1-m, the 0.9-m and the Burrell Schmidt. WIYN will add a fifth telescope to this list, with good image quality and a field of view and plate scale similar to that available at the 2.1-m. We would appreciate guidance from our users as we grapple with this issue. Comments may be sent to me at kpno@noao.edu or to the KPNO Users Committee Chair John Salzer. Caty Pilachowski
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