Semester 2022B Instrument Restrictions and Target Accessibility

This page provides best estimates, at the time of the Call for Proposals, of instrument restrictions and target (RA, DEC) accessibility for 2022B.

All instruments are restricted for sky visibility as described in the Table below. In addition:

• An engineering shutdown is scheduled for 25 nights starting October 10th 2022 and ending on November 4th 2022, pending the COVID-19 situation.  These nights will not be available for time critical events. The time available at RA 21 - 06 hours will be reduced by about 20%. 
• Altair  Altair is available in Natural Guide Star and Laser Guide Star mode in semester 2022B.
• MAROON-X, NIFS and NIRI share the bottom port of the telescope and will be block scheduled. We expect that each instrument will be scheduled for two or three approximately month-long observing blocks.

^**Due to limited sky availability during the semester, GMOS MOS programs requiring pre-imaging should not have targets in this region, and other programs with targets in this region should not require a large amount of time, or have strict timing or observing constraints.

All instruments are restricted for sky visibility as described in the Table below. In addition:

• An engineering shutdown is scheduled for 25 nights from August 1st 2022 to August 24th 2022, pending the COVID-19 situation. These nights will not be available for time critical events. Investigators with targets at RA 16 - 19 hours should have alternative targets available at later RAs.
• Due to greater-than-average, repeatable, weather loss in August and September at Gemini South, the availability of time at these RAs have been reduced: RA 18h - 20h by 15%, RA 21h - 23h by 8%, and RA 0h - 2h by 6%.
• Observations using GeMS are restricted to greater than 45 degrees elevation. How this translates into RA and DEC restrictions is indicated in the Table. Expectation is to have two or three laser runs of 7 nights, therefore up to about 150 hours will be scheduled at ITAC (Queue only, Bands 1 & 2 with IQ70 & IQ85).

^**Due to limited sky availability during the semester, GMOS MOS programs requiring pre-imaging should not have targets in this region, and other programs with targets in this region should not require a large amount of time, or have strict timing or observing constraints.

At each Gemini telescope, instruments are mounted at the Cassegrain focus on the instrument support structure (ISS). A science fold mirror mounted inside the ISS can be rotated to send the light from the telescope to any of four side-looking ports, or can be retracted so that the light goes to the up-looking port. At each site, the calibration unit and the Adaptive Optics system use two of the side ports, leaving two side-looking and one up-looking port for other instrumentation. As more than three instruments are offered each semester, instrument swaps are required and not all instruments will be available for the entire semester. Instrument swaps are driven by demand and scheduled to minimize impact on the queue. Certain targets or entire programs may not be feasible once the final schedule is determined, at ITAC or thereafter. If an instrument is requested for less than 6% of the Bands 1+2 time, the Observatory reserves the right to limit the RA range available to programs, or to not schedule the instrument.

Non-sidereal targets can have a broader range in RA than indicated in the Tables above due to, for example, the need to observe comets relatively close to the Sun. The ephemeris for any submitted target however must include a position that is accessible between evening and morning twilight at some point in the semester. For rapidly moving targets PIs should specify in the proposal when the target is accessible, and the coordinates of the target at that time, so that the observation can be checked for feasibility.

Gemini Observatory attempts to schedule all time-critical observations whenever possible within the constraints imposed by instrument availability, instrument configuration, weather, and science ranking band. Additionally, nights not scheduled for multi-instrument queue including classical and other observing modes, shutdowns, commissioning, etc., impose additional constraints on time-critical programs. Short observations (~1 hour) can often be accommodated during priority visitor periods. Programs with time-critical observations are asked to include detailed scheduling constraints with their proposal, such that they can be considered along with other constraints when developing the telescope schedule each semester.