Dear Colleagues,
The OPTICON common call for EU supported access to telescopes in semester 2019A (1 April 2019 – 1 October 2019) is open. It will close on 2 September 2018 at 23.59UT exactly.
The NORDIC OPTICAL TELESCOPE offers a total of 25 nights per semester.
For the details of the announcement, see:
http://www.astro-opticon.org/h2020/tna/call/call-2019a.html
ALL non-Nordic and non-Spanish proposals for the Nordic Optical Telescope MUST be submitted through the OPTICON common proposal and evaluation system.
We would like to *emphasize* that apart from regular visitor mode, the NOT also offers (queue) service mode observing and provides a wide range of options for flexible scheduling through Target-of-Opportunity programs and/or monitoring programs on any time-scale (from hours, to days, to weeks, to months, to years).
*We note that*
– A new fibre bundle, using octagonal fiber, was installed in FIES. This bundle improves the radial-velocity stability. Tests have shown the stability with the high-resolution fiber to be ~2 m/s on time-scales of a day, and below ~4 m/s on longer time-scales. The medium-resolution fiber is now also working, and tests have shown the stability to be similar to that of the high-resolution fiber. More extensive tests are on-going.
– We acquired a holographic diffuser to do high-precision photometry. The diffuser effectively scrambled the incoming light, providing a more constant and optimal (`top-head’) shape, with minimal light loss, significantly reducing any systematic effects in the photometry. The diffuser provides a very stable stellar image with a width (~FWHM) of 5.46 arcsec. A second diffuser, giving a stellar image with a width of 8 arcsec, is expected to arrive soon.
– The SOFIN high-resolution Echelle spectrograph is again available. It only is offered to do circular spectro-polarimetry with the
medium-resolution (R~80,000) camera. SOFIN is not a common-user instrument: only limited support is provided.
For some guidance on the various observing modes see http://www.not.iac.es/observing/too
Kind regards,
Thomas Augusteijn
Director, NOTSA