The 1998A semester for the NOAO WIYN queue observing experiment was completed on 22 July 1998. Although the weather was often quite good from late April to the middle of July, programs that had targets available early in the semester could not generally be completed because of our weather problems with El Niņo from February to mid-April. As a result, only 6 of 23 "long" observing programs could be completed outright. All of these science programs utilized MOS/Hydra. This reflects both the difficulty in finding periods of excellent seeing that most imaging programs require and the fact that nearly all of the bright time allocated to the queue program (~ 1/3 of the total) is used for spectroscopic projects. Over the last four semesters 24 MOS/Hydra programs (13 bright time programs) have been completed in terms of the number of hours spent obtaining data for a program reaching or exceeding the KPNO TACs' recommended allocation. This is 40% of the total number of MOS/Hydra long programs approved by the KPNO TACs. In contrast, only 5 of 26 imaging programs (nearly 20%) could be considered complete under this criterion during the last four semesters.
At the other extreme, approved observational programs for which the WIYN queue obtained no data also shows a dichotomy between the Imager and MOS/Hydra. In this case, 12 MOS/Hydra programs and one imaging program were not initiated. This lone imaging program involved follow-up to observations that were never obtained at the Kitt Peak 4-m telescope because of bad weather. The domination of MOS/Hydra programs in this unfortunate category underscores the greater difficulty of fitting "best effort" spectroscopic programs into the queue as backup programs to those with higher TAC ranking. A spectroscopic program in the "high priority" queue is either chosen to be the primary program for a particular night or is used as a backup program for highly ranked imaging projects. Since few MOS/Hydra programs request the same Bench Spectrograph configuration, there is a higher probability that best effort spectroscopic observations will not be attempted so that the queue avoids the substantial overhead associated with changing the spectrograph configuration during the night. Imaging programs, on the other hand, are not encumbered by large observational overheads and typically do not require as much time to obtain a scientifically viable data set as do MOS/Hydra programs. Therefore, the probability is high that the WIYN queue can provide at least some data for almost all long imaging programs under the current practice of limiting the queue to the number of programs that fully subscribe the approximate NOAO time allocation for the WIYN telescope. Averaged over the past four semesters, the NOAO allocation has been cut by 43% because of bad weather and technical problems (technical problems account for less than 5% of the total allocated time). This percentage of lost time is higher than for other Kitt Peak telescopes largely because the WIYN facility is operated through the summer monsoon season.
The table below summarizes how observational programs accepted into the 1998A WIYN queue fared. All data obtained during the 1998A semester have been distributed. Please contact us at wiynq@noao.edu if you have not received data that you believe were obtained for your program.
1998A (Spring 1998) WIYN Queue Observing
Level of Completion
Total 0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Long Programs:
High Priority 11 2 2 2 1 4
Best Effort 12 4 3 2 1 2
2Hr Programs:
High Priority 3 0 0 0 1 2
Best Effort 2 2 0 0 0 0
Totals: 28 8 5 4 3 8
The NOAO observing queues for the 1998B (fall 1998) semester have been
devised and posted on our Web site at
http://www.noao.edu/wiyn/obsprog/queue/F98/F98-Index.html . The 1998B NOAO
WIYN queue has been allocated 54 nights (548 hours; 142 hours during bright
time). The high priority queue is comprised of 11 programs, and 10 programs
are given best effort status (see the "Queue Rules" on the queue Web site
for a general explanation of how these two queues are handled during the
semester). Time was granted to 10 short programs by the 2 Hr Queue TAC.
However, the TAC did not explicitly rank these proposals and indicated that
several programs be executed only if they are reasonably compatible with the
instrumental setups required for programs in the long queues. Semester 1998B
marks the first time that DensePak programs are in the queue. There has also
been a shift in the relative demand for MOS/Hydra and the Imager. Over the
past two years MOS/Hydra programs have accounted for 70% of the long
programs placed in the queue. For 1998B the Imager accounts for nearly 50%
of the programs in the queue (MOS/Hydra = 40%; DensePak = 10%). The top of
the high priority queue is dominated by imaging programs (6 of the 7 highest
ranking programs).
Unfortunately, fiber 53 (blue fiber cable) broke during the past semester. Investigators wishing to use the blue fiber cable should use the new version of the "concentricities" file (v6.1) to construct their Hydra fiber assignment files. This file can be obtained at the NOAO FTP site ftp://ftp.noao.edu/kpno/hydra/.
The WIYN queue experiment will continue for the first semester of 1999. Proposers should be aware that DensePak will continue to be offered as a BRIGHT time instrument only. Also, based on the past experience executing 2 Hr queue imaging programs and the recommendations of the 1998B 2 Hr Queue TAC, the queue will no longer absorb the overheads associated with photometric calibration of 2 Hr queue imaging programs. Truly photometric nights have been rare at Kitt Peak over the past few years and the desire is to keep short queue programs within the 2 hour time limit. Photometric calibration of target fields will be obtained at the discretion of the queue observers based on the needs of long programs that have requested photometric calibration. 2 Hr queue proposers should design their experiment in a way that does not require multi-color photometry of many standard stars distributed in color and airmass, or obtain photometric calibration of their fields using other facilities. There is no change to the overheads charged to long imaging programs that request photometric calibration of their target fields. Two hours should be added to the time request for every 8 hours (including overheads) required to observe your science targets if you wish to have standard stars observed.
We remind investigators requesting time on the WIYN telescope to include the observing overheads detailed on the WIYN queue Web site in their time request for the 1999A semester (see http:/www.noao.edu/wiyn/obsprog/proginfo/OverHeads.html).
Paul Smith for the WIYN Queue Team
(D. Harmer, A. Saha, and D. Willmarth)