The following capabilities and announcements are notable for the 2022A semester. Please see the relevant instrument pages and subsections of the call for proposals for details.

General:

• Starting in semester 2022A, all Gemini proposals requesting time from Canada must be anonymized. This applies to programs requesting time only from Canada, and to joint programs requesting time from multiple participants which include Canada. This applies to programs requesting Canadian time whether it is the PI or a co-I that has the Canadian affiliation. Other participants are moving to implement a dual-anonymous review process (DARP) in semester 2022B or 2023A, and so it is in the best interest of all investigators to learn how to write an anonymous science case. Guidance is available at the Canadian DARP page.


• Gemini is planning the 2022A semester call for proposal as usual. However significant changes can happen and impact the available observing time and instruments, due to the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.


• Classical and Priority Visitor mode is offered for semester 2022A at Gemini North, but not accepted at Gemini South. This may change as the pandemic evolves. If circumstances preclude having people on site, then awarded Classical time will revert to eavesdropping, and Priority Visitor will revert to queue. The "Bring One, Get One" Student Observer Support Program remains unavailable.

Facility Instruments:

• Gemini North GNIRS (1-5 micron spectrometer) is expected to be unavailable during the month of March, for the installation of new integral field units. 

  UPDATE OCTOBER 28 2021: The GNIRS IFU work has been delayed. GNIRS will now be down between mid-April and mid-May, instead of the month of March. This means no time critical GNIRS observations in that period, and a reduction in available time of about 25% at RA 10 to 19 hours.

Visiting Instruments:

• 'Alopeke and Zorro, the fast low-noise dual-channel and dual-plate-scale imagers with speckle and wide-field modes, will be available for science (subject to demand) as resident visiting instruments at Gemini North and Gemini South, respectively, in 2022A.
• IGRINS, a high-resolution (R~45000), single-setting, near IR (1.45 - 2.5 microns) echelle spectrometer, will be available for science (subject to demand) as a visiting instrument at Gemini South in 2022A. New for semester 2022A: PIs must include the additional overheads for science target acquisition and detector readout in their requested time. The Gemini Phase I Tool will automatically add time for telluric star calibrations to the requested science time. See the IGRINS at Gemini page for more information.
• MAROON-X, a high-resolution (R~80,000), optical (500 - 900nm) radial velocity (RV) spectrometer  as a visiting instrument at Gemini North in 2022A. The instrument is open to the community for high precision RV studies as well as general purpose high resolution spectroscopy. The instrument has demonstrated sub-m/s on-sky precision for RV measurements of M dwarfs, although the instrument performance is continually being assessed and improved. Please use the Maroon-X Exposure Time Calculator to evaluate the instrument performance.
• POLISH-2, a high-precision optical polarimeter, will be available for science (subject to demand) as a visiting instrument at Gemini North in 2022A. POLISH-2 requires the instrument team to be present at the telescope and therefore runs may be cancelled if the Covid-19 pandemic prevents visitors at the Observatory.

Targets are generally limited to 4 < RA hours < 1 and -37 < DEC degrees < +90. There are additional constraints as described in the target accessibility and instrument restrictions page.

Facility instruments offered in 2022A are:

• GMOS North (0.36-1.03 micron imager and spectrometer): available throughout the semester. The R600 grating is available to classical programs only.

• GNIRS (1-5 micron spectrometer): expected to be unavailable during the month of March 2022, due to the installation of new integral field units. Access to RAs of 7 to 10 hours will be significantly reduced and investigators using GNIRS are encouraged to be as flexible as possible with their targets. As before, the short red camera is NOT available. YJHK imaging is available via the acquisition keyhole.

• NIFS (0.95-2.40 micron integral field unit spectrometer): available with or without AO capability throughout the semester.

• NIRI (1-5 micron imager): available throughout the semester. As in past semesters, NIRI is NOT available for spectroscopy.

Visiting instruments offered in 2022A (subject to demand) are:

• 'Alopeke: a dual-channel fast-readout visual-wavelength camera giving simultaneous diffraction-limited images in two filters over a 2.8 arcsec field of view; as well as a wide-field mode which provides simultaneous two-color imaging in standard SDSS filters over a 60" field of view. The scheduling and length of the Alopeke visiting block(s) will be subject to community demand.  Targets of Opportunity (Rapid or Standard) are accepted for Alopeke, but will only be executed during the instrument blocks.

• GRACES: a high-resolution, R~67,500, optical (0.4-1 micron) spectrometer. Scheduled blocks to be determined with CFHT (where the instrument resides), based on demand.

• POLISH-2: the high-precision visiting polarimeter, will be available for science, subject to demand.  The instrument is open to the community via collaborative proposals with the PI. If you are interested in obtaining data in the 2022A semester with this instrument, you must contact the PI (Sloane Wiktorowicz - sloane.j.wiktorowicz at aero.org). For more details of the instrument itself, consult the following publication: Wiktorowicz et al. 2015 ApJ 813 and references therein.  In 2016B, it was found that for stars brighter than B = 6 mag, precision of around 10 parts per million requires about 10 minutes of observing time. However, due to the large intrinsic telescope polarization of 0.4%, accuracy at  the 10 part per million level has not been demonstrated at the time of this call for proposals.

• MAROON-X: a high-resolution (R~80,000), optical (500 - 900nm) radial velocity (RV) spectrometer,  is open to the community for high precision RV studies as well as general purpose high-resolution spectroscopy.  Please use the Maroon-X Exposure Time Calculator to evaluate the instrument performance.

Targets are generally limited to 5 < RA hours < 2 and -90° < dec < +28°. There are additional constraints as described in the target accessibility and instrument restrictions page.

Facility instruments offered in 2022A are:

• GMOS South (0.36-1.03 micron imager and spectrometer): available throughout the semester. The R600 grating is not available.

• FLAMINGOS-2 (0.9-2.4 micron wide-field imager and spectrometer): offered in imaging and long-slit modes throughout the semester.  F2-MOS commissioning is not yet completed, but we expect it can be offered as part of the Fast Turnaround (FT) Program during the semester.

• GSAOI (0.9-2.4 micron adaptive optics imager) with the GeMS Adaptive Optics system: due to guide star limitations, investigators must check the availability of Guide Star constellations using the Observing Tool before submitting a proposal.  Observations in IQ85 are possible for programs that can use delivered images with full-width half-maximum of ~0.2 arcseconds as opposed to the ≤ 0.1 arcseconds delivered in IQ70 or IQ20 conditions. Observations under non-photometric conditions with 0.1 mag uniform extinction are also possible under very good IQ conditions.  The expectation is to have two or three laser runs of 7 nights each during the semester, the actual schedule will be based on the demand from the community.

Visiting instruments offered in 2022A (subject to demand) are:

• Zorro: a dual-channel fast-readout visual-wavelength camera giving simultaneous diffraction-limited images in two filters over a 2.8 arcsec field of view; as well as a wide-field mode which provides simultaneous two-color imaging in standard SDSS filters over a 60" field of view. The scheduling and length of the Zorro visiting block(s) will be subject to community demand.  Targets of Opportunity (Rapid or Standard) are accepted for Zorro, but will only be executed during the instrument blocks.

• IGRINS, a high-resolution (R~45000), single-setting, near IR (1.45 - 2.5 microns) echelle spectrometer, will be available throughout the semester except for two weeks before and during the 7-night GeMS/GSAOI runs. See the IGRINS at Gemini page for more information on writing IGRINS proposals.

The exchange of time between the Gemini and Subaru communities will continue in 2022A. Gemini and Subaru expect to be able to exchange a minimum of 5 nights. A summary of the Subaru capabilities in 2022A is given below, PIs should also consult the Subaru Call for Proposals.

Relevant information:

• Do NOT double-dip! PIs applying for time on the Subaru telescope must only apply via ONE of the following routes: Japanese researchers via the Subaru call; other researchers via the open use time offered in the Subaru call; Gemini community PIs via the Gemini time-exchange program; or Keck community PIs via the Keck time-exchange program. Duplicating your proposal across more than one of these committees leads to confusion and aggravated TAC members.
• Proposals for time on Subaru via the Gemini time-exchange program are submitted via the normal Gemini Phase I process.
• Subaru telescope downtime: Semester 2022A will be shortened so that the mirror coating and other engineering work can be done in the July to September 2022 period. The exact dates are not determined as of this Call.
• Subaru instrument downtime:
  • Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) will not be available between February and early April, while the top-end exchanger is worked on.
  • Only Natural Guide Star Adaptive Optics is available in 2022A because of laser upgrade work.
  • The windscreen of the Subaru telescope is out of operation in 2022A, and thus tracking of target may not be possible in high winds. It is recommended that PIs have targets across a range of RAs so that different azimuth angles are available.

Facility instruments offered in 2022A:

• AO188 (Subaru 188-elements Adaptive Optics system) is available but only in Natural Guide Star mode, LGS-AO is not offered.

• FOCAS (optical camera and spectrograph) is available. 

• HDS (optical high dispersion spectrometer) is available.

• Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC - very wide field optical to far-red imager) is available only between late April and the end of the semester (June or July, depending on the telescope shutdown schedule). Three, approximately two-week-long, HSC runs are expected to be scheduled in that time period. The requested time should include overheads and be in multiples of one hour.  Important notice for HSC filters: all applicants must explicitly describe the filters they intend to use, in their proposal. The desired set as well as the minimum acceptable set should be clearly specified. Applicants wishing to use the NB391 or NB395 filter must obtain approval from the filter developer team. 

• IRCS (infrared camera and spectrometer, with Natural Guide Star Adaptive Optics capability) is available. The polarimetry mode is a shared-risk mode.  PIs should check the filter availability for the instrument before submitting a proposal.

• MOIRCS (near-infrared imager and multi-object spectrometer) has been hibernated during the SWIMS operation (see note below for SWIMS ).

Visiting instruments offered in 2022A, are listed below. Proposals to use visiting instruments must include the instrument PIs as Co-investigators. 

• CHARIS: Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph - provides high contrast images of exoplanets, disks, brown dwarfs with SCExAO.
• Fast PDI (in shared-risk mode): polarization differential imaging (PDI) with a high speed (>kHz) near-IR (950 - 1860 nm) low-noise camera (C-RED One), optimized for high contrast imaging of circumstellar disks with SCExAO+AO188. 
• IRD - Infrared Doppler (in shared-risk mode): infrared high-dispersion, high resolution (up to 70,000) fiber-fed spectrometer.  IRD SSP is started in 2019A – any IRD proposal must clarify how its scientific aim is different from SSP. The observing mode REACH (SCExAO+IRD), is available.
• MEC (in shared-risk mode), decision on availability to be made mid-October 2021: the MKID Exoplanet Camera is a near-IR (800-1400nm) photon-counting low-resolution (R~5) integral field spectrograph optimized for high contrast imaging with SCExAO+AO188.
• SWIMS (in shared-risk mode): Simultaneous-color Wide-field Infrared Multi-object Spectrograph - an imager and multi-object spectrograph in the NIR wavelength. SWIMS applicants cannot request MOIRCS as a backup instrument.
• VAMPIRES : The Visible Aperture Masking Polarimetric Imager for Resolved Exoplanetary Structures (VAMPIRES) is a visible light instrument on the SCExAO system. 
• NsIR Wave Plate Unit: a visiting device for IRCS/SCExAO polarimetry mode.