Thai National Telescope
Call for Observing Proposals
Cycle 4: October 2016 - April 2017
Deadline:August31st, 2016 (23:59 Bangkok Time)
Proposals are invited to request time on the 2.4m Thai National Telescope (TNT) for the Cycle 4 observing season (October 10 2016to April 30 2017, inclusive). Eligible proposers are restricted to researchers affiliated to Thai institutes, and to researchers from institutes holding special Agreements with NARIT. Separated terms of evaluation are in place for proposals from junior Thai researchers.
Principal Investigator (PI) is required to fill out our on-line application form and submit the completed application(s) on-line before the deadline given above. Please note that before an application can be created, the PI must first sign up for an account. The system administrator will need to activate your account before you can log back on to prepare an application. This will usually happen in 24 hours if the PI is an eligible applicant for the TNT time. The PI will get email notification once his/her account has been authorized. Should you encounter any problem please send email to .
To facilitate proposal preparation in collaboration with colleagues and Co-investigators, please feel free to use the Microsoft Word form. But note that the submission is accepted via our on-line application system ONLY. The on-line proposal can be created any time after the PI’s account has been authorized and can be modified, saved for completion and submission at later time. The applicant is responsible to ensure that his/her completed proposal(s) are submitted by clicking the SUBMIT button.Once the proposal has been submitted, it is not possible to make any change to your application.
The Proposals will be reviewed and ranked on the basis of their scientific merit by a Time Allocation Committee (TAC) nominated by the NARIT Director. TAC members include qualified researchers from NARIT and other institutes in Thailand and Asia. The technical feasibility of the proposals will be reviewed by the NARIT Operations Department. Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their proposals by September11th, 2016.
Observers are expected to contact the NARIT staffto prepare their visit at least one month in advance of their run. They are expected to cover their expenses for travel to the TNT DoiInthanon site as well as for local accommodation and subsistence. A set of Instructions for Visiting Astronomers are available to facilitate the logistics of the visit. Visitors are strictly required to fill an End of Run report and submit it to the NARIT staff within one week after the end of observations.
Contents
Overview of Cycle 4
Reserved time allocations in Cycle 4
Special terms for Junior Thai Researchers
Authorship and publication rules
Instructions
1.The Telescope and Observation Planning
2.The Instruments
3.Performance
4.Overheads
5.Weather
6.Requested time and Moon phases
7.Observing modes
8.Program Types
Contacts
Overview of Cycle 4
Since Cycle 3, the observing season was extended to include large parts of October. The weather conditions in this month are expected to be less favorable than the rest of the period, however there will be no compensation for weather losses.
Currently, the available proposal modes include normal programs (NOR), Target of Opportunity (ToO), Fast Time Response (FTR) and Director Discretionary Time (DDT). Only NOR, ToO and FTR proposals should be submitted by August 31st. DDT proposals can be submitted at any time during the Cycle. More details are given in the corresponding section.
In order to promote applications by junior Thai researchers, up to 30 nights of telescope time are reserved for qualifying applicants under the terms described in below.
For the latest on instrumentation, please refer to specific section.
Reserved time allocationsin Cycle 4
Two nights per month will be reserved to technical and commissioning activities.
Twenty-five nights over the whole Cycle 4 are reserved to the ULTRASPEC Consortium Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO), divided into several observing runs.
About 10 nights will be allocated to the Director Discretionary Time (DDT).
The exact dates of the technical, GTO and DDT nights will be chosen during the scheduling process.
Qualifying junior Thai researchers may claim to be considered under the terms given below. In this case, their proposals will be evaluated separately from the rest. Up to 30 nights are reserved for this initiative.
About 3-4 half nights will be allocated for public Open House Activities
Special terms for Junior Thai Researchers
For the observing season 2016-2017, NARIT and the TNO Time Allocation Committee would like to offer a chance for young researchers in Thailand to apply for observing time under a special program. The qualified proposals will be considered for the scientific merits and will be competing for time allocation with applications under the same category only. The maximum total allocable time under this program is approximately 15% of the total number of nights available for scientific observation, and for season 2016-2017, it will be 30 nights. The purpose of this program is to encourage young Thai researchers to apply for TNO observing time and improving their proposal writing and data analysis skills in the process. The applicants are therefore encouraged to contact and collaborate with NARIT researchers in the preparations of their proposals and the analysis of their data however this is not compulsory.
The application is considered qualified if it satisfies the following criteria, the PI must also explicitly declare that he/she wishes to apply for observing time under this program in the application by marking the corresponding box on the first page of the Application Form.
1) The PI must be either
1.1) A Thai or foreign national working at Thai university or research institute other than NARIT and having completed his/her PhD degree no more than 3 years ago.
1.2) A Thai or foreign postgraduate student enrolled at a Thai university. He/she will also need a letter of reference/consent from his/her academic supervisor. The proposal must be linked to and the data will be used for his/her research project.
1.3) A faculty member (without a PhD degree) who engages in teaching of astronomy or astrophysics at a Thai university.
2) The fraction of total number of Thai affiliated Co-investigators + PI to the total number of PI+Co-I (Thai and foreign affiliated) must be more than 2/3.
Authorshipand publication rules
According to the Memorandum of Understanding between NARIT and the ULTRASPEC Consortium, all papers based on observations carried out with ULTRASPEC at TNT shall include at least Professors VikDhillon and Tom Marsh from the ULTRASPEC team. This applies to data taken starting from Cycle 1.
All publications based at least partially on data obtained at TNT shall bear the following text, either in the subtitle or in the acknowledgements:"This work has made use of data obtained at the Thai National Observatory on DoiInthanon, operated by NARIT."
Instructions
Proposers are required to read carefully this section before preparing their requests.
1.The Telescope and Observation Planning
The Thai 2.4-m National Telescope (TNT) is located at DoiInthanon. The geographical coordinates are 18° 34´ 25.41” N, 98° 28´ 56.06” E, and the elevation is 2457 meters asl. Together with other smaller telescopes, they form the Thai National Observatory (TNO). The telescope is an alt-az with a 2.4m primary mirror[1] and two f/10 Nasmyth foci. At present, only one of these is equipped with a derotator. Nasmyth 1 hosts an instrument cube which can mount up to 4 instruments simultaneously and allows fast (less than one minute) switching between them. An autoguiderexists but due to severe vignetting it is normally not mounted on the cube. Without the autoguider, the current tracking performance is about one arcsecond over 15 minutes, depending on elevation.
The TNO site has a distinctive tall telecommunications tower to the East of the telescope, which blocks observations in a restricted area of the sky. Requesters might consult the observing horizonmap while preparing their observations.
Requesters are advised to check carefully the observability of their targets depending on coordinates and time of the year, i.e. using a tool such as Staralt, which already includes the TNO site. The telescope can point to very low elevations, however starting from about 30 degrees elevation the dome introduces some vignetting.
2.The Instruments
In Cycle 4, the following instruments are available:
ARC 4k camera. This is the facility imager for all science goals not requiring time resolution shorter than ~100s (where ULTRASPEC is the most suitable instrument). The camera has been designed and realized by ARC (Astronomical Research Cameras, Inc.), and is based on an E2V232-84 thinned, astronomy broadband AR coated, Grade One CCD with 4096 x 4096 x 15.0 micron pixels. The field of view is 8’ on the side and the RON is 4e-. The camera is equipped with UBVRI, Hα, red continuum, and [SII] filters. The camerawas commissioned in Cycle 2, however no commissioning report, results or user manual are available. Use of this instrument is granted on a shared-risk basis.
ULTRASPEC, a visitor instrument delivered under a Memorandum of Understanding among NARIT, the University of Sheffield and the University of Warwick (PI V.Dhillon). Born out of the experience with the successful ULTRACAM fast 3-band camera and using similar acquisition electronics, ULTRASPEC is based on a state-of-the-art low-light level (L3) Electron Multiplying CCD by e2V with 1k x 1k x 13µm pixels with virtually zero RON. One key feature is the so-called frame-transfer, which enables fast data readout (100ms full frame, and up to 10ms on subarrays). The instrument is equipped with a large set of broad-band (mostly based on the SDSS system) and narrow-band filters. ULTRASPEC is ideally suited to measure fast varying phenomena such as flares, outbursts, transits, etc. It has been widely used already in Cycle 1, 2 and 3. The ULTRASPEC consortium has a right to Guaranteed Time Observations, but open time is available for other requesters. A detailed description with relevant links can be found in Dhillon et al. MNRAS, 444, 4009 (2014).
MRES, a medium spectral resolution (R=15,000, 1.4” slit; 2 pixel resolution R=17,000) fiber-fed echelle-spectrometer manufactured by Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology(NIAOT), China. It is based on white pupil optics design with R2.6, 52.67 g/mm, blazed at 69 degree echelle and covers the 390-880 nm spectral range with anAndor 2048x51213.5pixel size CCD.The instrument was installed and commissioned in Cycle 2, however no commissioning report, proven performances and user manuals are available. Observations and data reduction are on a shared-risk basis.
3.Performance
An Exposure Time Calculator (ETC) isavailable for ULTRASPEC, fromV.Dhillon’sweb page.
For spectroscopy, an ETC is not yet available. As a guideline, the limiting sensitivity of MRES is tentatively estimated at V=14.5 (1 hour) due to lack of an auto-guider.
Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the OPD staff to find out the latest status of each instrument.
4.Overheads
The following overheads should be considered in the time requests:
Telescope pointing and acquisition: 5 min
Filter changes: 30s
Instrument changes: 1 minute
Flat-Field, Dark: usually included in the calibrations at the beginning and end of night.
Other calibrations: consult the NARIT staff
Concerning interruptions (e.g. fixed-time events, transits, occultations, etc), the PI should include in the time request also the time needed to change instrument, point the telescope, and any other overheads as necessary. Note that instrument changes are limited to the M4 rotation. The TNO staff shall not as a rule switch off other instruments or disconnect cables as part of the change.
5.Weather
The weather at the DoiInthanon site is known to have not only a large seasonal variation, but also significant fluctuations of conditions from one night to the next and within the same night. In particular, humidity can vary from extremely dry in some winter nights (below 10% RH), to condensing conditions even when the sky is clear. A set of rules to open and close the dome are in place and will be followed by the Telescope Operator in charge. Astronomers are asked to respect these procedures.
Weather statistics are still incomplete. It is recommended that requesters apply only for the time strictly needed for their observations, without allowance for weather factors.Similary, the seeing conditions are not yet fully characterized. Experience shows that seeing can be as good as 0.8”, and is generally better than 2”. A rough average of 1.3” at the zenith may be assumed.
6.Requested time and Moon phases
On theapplication Form, the PI is asked to specify the number of hours or nights requested. This can be structured, if desired, into Dark, Grey, Bright time. For this, we follow the definitions given in a study by Ian Skillen (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes) and we adopt the following ranges of Fractional Lunar Illumination (FLI):
Dark: / 0.00 / ≤ / FLI / 0.25Grey: / 0.25 / ≤ / FLI / 0.65
Bright: / 0.65 / ≤ / FLI / ≤ / 1.00
Of course, “Any” means that any of Dark, Grey, Bright is acceptable. Under “Total”, the PI shall input the sum of all Dark, Grey, Bright times.
7.Observing modes
Since Cycle 3, observations can be carried out in visitor mode from DoiInthanon, or remotely from Chiang Mai.
In the first case, the observer will work from TNO and is generally accommodated at the Astrolodge at the Base Camp (DoiInthanon National Park Headquarters). The arrangements may vary however, and the PI should contact the NARIT staffwell in advance of the run.
In the second case, the observer will sit at a workstation at the NARIT Headquarters in Chiang Mai, from where he can control the instrument(s), download the data, and communicate with the TNO staff via phone or skype. The telescope shall be controlled and under the responsibility of the TNO staff. At the moment, remote observations have been verified and are offered for MRES, 4K ARC, ULTRASPEC.
Program Types
The following program types are offered and can be selected in the on-line application form: NOR, ToO, FTR, DDT. They are described in the following overview table.
Type / Normal / Target of Opportunity / Fast Time Response / Director's Discretionary TimeApproval / TAC / TAC / TAC / Director
Submission / Regular Call (August) / Regular Call (August) / Regular Call (August) / Anytime in the period (Oct-May)
Science Case / Yes / Yes / Yes / Yes
Time request / As needed by science case / One or more times during the period, if occasion arises / One or more times during a specified range of dates, triggered by alert / DDT nights, or part of nights, only
Response / Follow the schedule / Modification of schedule, as far as possible (e.g. not interrupting time critical programs) / Immediate override of other programs (incl. time critical programs, DDT, etc) / Added to schedule
Priority / None required / Equivalent to Normal proposals / Above Normal proposals / None required
Action by PI / None required / Contact Scheduler / Contact TNO staff / Form with DDT option, sent to Director
Example / Known science topic / Unusual comet / Fast Radio Bursts / Unforeseen science topic, or need of extra time to complete a program interrupted by other causes
Contacts
Action / EmailProposal submission: /
Inquiries about travel and accommodation arrangements: /
Inquiries about Instrumentation availability and performance: /
End of Run report: /
Questions about the application /
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[1] The primary is currently masked to 2.3m clear aperture, to avoid diffraction from the mirror edge.