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FLAMINGOS I Proposal Checklist
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To demonstrate technical feasibility you may wish to consider the following checklist
when writing your telescope proposal:
- Instrument configuration:
- Is the filter (for imaging) or slit (for spectroscopy) specified in the proposal
instrument resource list?
- Does your choice of slit give appropriate spectral resolution and sensitivity?
- Telescope peripheral wavefront sensors:
- Have you specified an appropriate guide star for the peripheral wavefront sensor(s)? Is any vignetting
of the science field acceptable?
- Is the same guide star likely to be accessible for all planned dither positions or have
alternate guide stars been specified?
- Calibrations:
- Are the baseline calibrations sufficient? If not,
what additional calibration data are required for your program?
- Is photometry better than 10% needed? If so, have appropriate standard star observations
been included?
- Has sufficient observing time been requested for additional calibrations?
- Observing time:
- Are overheads included in the time requested in your
proposal including any for additional calibrations?
- Is time included for off-source sky measurements, if needed?
- If many very short exposures are needed, you may need to include larger overheads to
account for the lower observing efficiency.
- If accurate centering of the slit on the target is essential, have appropriate overheads
been included to allow periodic checks of the slit centering?
- Observing conditions
requested (for QuickStart observations):
- Is the expected
image quality (scaled to the airmass of your target) sufficient for your program? What is
the minimum image quality necessary for the science?
- What level of cloud
cover is acceptable? Is photometric weather required?
- The sky background and water vapour conditions generally are not relevant for JHK
observations.
- Note the product of the probabilities of each of the conditions listed above. You might
wish to reconsider the minimum requirements of your program.
- Recheck the observing conditions requested!
Last update February 26, 2001; Phil Puxley