The SCience OPErations Division, in collaboration with KPNO and CTIO, is
planning to make exposure time calculators for the various NOAO instruments
available to investigators as an aid in preparing observing proposals.
Accurate exposure estimates are necessary during proposal preparation to
provide reasonable time estimates both for the number of nights requested on
the front page of the printed proposal and for the discussion and
justification in the Experimental Design section. We would like to implement
a single tool that can be used for all telescope and instrument
configurations available through the NOAO proposal process. This general
Web-based exposure time calculator tool is still in the planning stages, but
for imaging estimates now we encourage the use of our Web-interface to the
IRAF task ccdtime at http://www.noao.edu/scope/ccdtime/. The database driver
for this task has been updated to contain information for computing exposure
times for all imaging instruments, including IR, at KPNO and CTIO.
Each site also maintains additional Web tools for helping investigators to identify imaging or spectroscopic needs and exposure times. KPNO has two tools at http://www.noao.edu/kpno/imaging/imaging.html (identify a telescope/instrument configuration from input requirements) and at http://www.noao.edu/kpno/spectroscopy/spect.html (predict a telescope/spectrograph combination based on input parameters). CTIO supports exposure time calculators for many of their optical spectrographs---see http://www.ctio.noao.edu/spectrographs/spectrographs.html .
Todd Boroson, Dick Joyce, Steve Heathcote