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New Observing Modes for the Next Century (1Sep95)
(from USGP, NOAO Newsletter No. 43, September 1995)

In early July, the USGP, along with the Gemini Project, the Joint
Astronomy Centre, ESO, and the University of Hawaii at Hilo, sponsored
a workshop on alternative modes of observing. About 85 participants,
from a total of nine countries, attended the workshop, which was held
at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. The motivation for the workshop
was to compare progress and future plans among the many observatories
that are trying to improve the quantity and quality of their
scientific output by innovative operational approaches.

The worskshop comprised six sessions: Key issues; Needs and desires of
future large telescopes; Scheduling strategies; Remote/service/queue:
experience; Tools for planning, scheduling, and observing; and Data
reduction and archiving.  Each session included an open discussion on
the issues raised during the invited and contributed talks. A number
of posters were on display throughout the meeting. The proceedings
will be issued as a volume in the conference series of the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Although almost all of the next generation of telescopes will require
some kind of flexible scheduling in order to make most effective use
of the varying atmospheric conditions, the presentations indicated
that there is a substantial gap between what has been done and what is
planned. Software systems such as Spike for HST and ATIS or APA for
photometric monitoring telescopes have  demonstrated the capability to
address certain sorts of scheduling and planning problems. Whether
they can be adapted/expanded for the somewhat different constraints of
large ground-based telescopes is not yet clear. Associated with the
difficulty of responding to the conditions is the difficulty of
measuring (and hopefully, predicting) them. In addition to the general
problem of implementing a scheduling strategy, substantial parts of
the discussion centered on factors affecting the reliability of
service observing and how one confidently identifies potentially
successful proposals.

Todd Boroson

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