Observations

Resolution of the Council of Polish Members of SALT

dated 22/10/2012

Having regard to the effective use of data produced by the Polish observing time on the telescope SALT Council resolves:

1. Observations obtained under normal one-semester programs are to be available for Polish astronomical community after 12 months from the end of the semester.
2. For programs that require follow-up by a number of semesters the project manager can ask the Council for granting the status of a long-term program. This status can be given to programs requiring long-term monitoring of a group of objects or the programs of a survey type. The desire to observe for a number of semesters a group of objects of a similar type does not necessarily mean that the program will be considered as long-term. In the case of long-term programs, the data will be made available to the Polish community 18 months after the end of the last semester of observation.
3. All observations will be included in a public open database after 3 years from the end of the last semester of observation within the framework of the program.

Programs that require access to the northern sky will be implemented at the telescope (HET http://www.as.utexas.edu/mcdonald/het) giving up time of SALT.

Currently available instruments are:

• CCD imaging camera - SALTICAM,
• medium resolution spectrograph - Robert Stobie Spectrograf (RSS),
• micro-channel plate for high-speed photometry - The Berkeley Visible Imaging Tube (BVIT).
• high-resolution spectrograph - HRS.

Poland has 10% of the telescope time. In accordance with the current specifications about 330 nights a year will be devoted to observations. Since on average 75% of the nights at SAAO are suitable for observation, we can expect about 25 nights per year. They will fall on the different phases of the moon. Rating and ranking of Polish proposals is made ​​by the Council of Holders. The date and method of submission of applications will be announced with due notice.

Observations are made in a queuing mode only. This means that the accepted programs are implemented by SALT staff without the participation of the investigators. The collected material becomes remotely accessible upon completion of data collection.

Polish astronomers can also apply for time on other telescopes SAAO. SALT consortium members have priority in applications of 20% of the time made ​​available to external observers through the SAAO. Information about the available instruments may be found on the http://www.saao.ac.za/science/facilities/instruments/.

Detailed information for astronomers to plan and conduct observations with SALT is available at http://astronomers.salt.ac.za/.