Fiscal Year 2005 Awards

In the FY05 proposal cycle, TSIP made awards totaling nearly $4 mil. for new, scientifically significant instrumentation at the Keck telescopes and WIYN Observatory. As a result, the community garnered a cumulative 64 nights of observing time at these premier facilities.

For the Keck 10-m telescopes, the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA) received $2.45 mil. for first-year design work on the Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infra-Red Exploration, MOSFIRE. (For details on MOSFIRE, see: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~irlab/mosfire/.) This award brings an additional 24 nights on the Keck telescopes to the public community, beginning in NOAO proposal semester 2006B.

The WIYN Corporation was awarded $1.64 mil. over three years in support of the WIYN ODI, a One-Degree Imager for the WIYN 3.5-m which is slated for scientific operation in early 2009. (For more on the ODI project, see: http://www.noao.edu/wiyn/ODI/) On completion of the new instrument, WIYN will make 40 nights available for public-access observing over five semesters, probably beginning in NOAO proposal semester 2009B. Since NSF/NOAO is part owner of the WIYN telescope, the public community currently has access to approximately 40% of WIYN time; the nights resulting from the TSIP award are obviously incremental to the “public” time.