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Semester 2012A Time Distribution

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Gemini North: Time Availability and Distribution

A minimum of 92% of the time will be available for science use on Gemini North in 2012A. This amounts to 166 nights and includes a 7% Director's Discretionary Time allocation, in agreement with Gemini Board resolution 2011.A.9. Of the Director's Discretionary Time, the Director has decided to make 5% available for staff use, while 2% will be available to all astronomers through the Director's Discretionary Time proposal process throughout the semester. Staff time remains open for joint proposals with the partners. The non-science time will be used for observatory maintenance tasks, commissioning of GMOS with new CCDs, commissioning of GRACES, and on-sky tests of the P1 peripheral wavefront sensor with the LGS system. Any unused engineering time will be returned to science. Note that historically around 5% of each semester's science time is used to complete highly ranked programs from the previous two semesters to which the ITAC granted rollover status. The number of hours available to each partner and the host in 2012A is given in the following table. The numbers take into account corrections for prior imbalances.

Partner Estimated Hours Available
US 658
UK 315
Canada 199
Australia 78
Brazil 53
Argentina 31
Univ. of Hawaii (host)
204

Gemini South: Time Availability and Distribution

A minimum of 73% of the time will be available for science use on Gemini South in 2012A. This amounts to 132 nights, and includes the final 30 hours of NICI campaign science, which are distributed across the partners that participate in the campaign, 13 nights of Science Verification for FLAMINGOS-2 and GSAOI, and 7% of Director's Discretionary Time in agreement with Gemini Board resolution 2011.A.9. Of the Director's Discretionary Time, the Director has decided to make 5% available for staff use, while 2% will be available to all astronomers through the Director's Discretionary Time proposal process throughout the semester. Staff time remains open for joint proposals with the partners. The non-science time will be used for observatory maintenance tasks, FLAMINGOS-2 commissioning, and GSAOI commissioning. Any unused engineering time will be returned to science. Note that historically around 5% of each semester's science time is used to complete highly ranked programs from the previous two semesters to which the ITAC granted rollover status. The number of hours available to each partner and the host in 2012A is given in the following table. The numbers take into account corrections for prior imbalances.

Partner Estimated Hours Available
US 475
UK 223
Canada 141
Australia 56
Brazil 44
Argentina 23
Chile (host) 107

Time Adjustments

To maintain overall balance amongst the partnership, the values shown above for both Gemini North and South have been adjusted from the nominal partner shares as a result of actual time charged through 2011A. The time allocations also include a purchase by Brazil of 35 hours of UK time at each telescope. The values shown in the tables above were recommended by the Operations Working Group in August 2011. The number of nights is approximated by int(hours/10).



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