We would like to inform you that we are now accepting SALT Phase 1 proposals
for the period 01 May 2017 - 31 October 2017 (2017 Semester 1).
The Phase 1 proposal deadline is Wednesday, 1 February 2017, at 18:00 SAST
(corresponding to 16:00 UTC).
This proposal call is for SALTICAM, RSS, HRS, and BVIT. All details of the
status of specific instrument modes are available in the Call for Proposals
link below, including changes from previous semesters. A new development
enhancing data quality of all instruments is the recent successful
introduction of active mirror alignment on SALT.
Please submit your proposal via the SALT Principal Investigator Proposal Tool
(PIPT). Instructions, software, and other information about proposing for SALT
can be found on the SALT website.
All questions regarding this proposal call should be addressed to:
salthelp(at)salt.ac.za
Sincerely,
SALT Astronomy Operations
2016.10.20
Biuletyn SALT - październik 2016
2016.06.22
Konkurs wniosków obserwacyjnych na II semestr 2016
Oto oryginalna wiadomość:
Dear Colleagues,
We would like to inform you that we are now accepting SALT Phase 1 proposals
for the period 01 November 2016 - 30 April 2017 (2016 Semester 2).
The Phase 1 proposal deadline is Friday, 29 July 2016, at 18:00 SAST
(corresponding to 16:00 UTC).
This proposal call is for SALTICAM, RSS, HRS, and BVIT. All details of the status
of specific instrument modes are available in the Call for Proposals link below,
including changes from previous semesters. A new development enhancing data quality
of all instruments is the recent successful introduction of active mirror alignment
on SALT.
Please submit your proposal via the SALT Principal Investigator Proposal Tool (PIPT).
Instructions, software, and other information about proposing for SALT can be found
on the SALT website.
- Reminder of Phase-1 deadline for 2016-1: Friday, Jan 29th
- Updated PIPT manual
- Record breaking weather and seeing
- Polarimetry update
- Fabry-Perot update
- Upgrade projects and 2015-2 targets
- Laser Frequency Comb update
- Press release: Brightest ever Supernova
- Science papers
REMINDER OF PHASE-1 DEADLINE FOR 2016-1
All PIs are reminded of the deadline at 18:00 SAST (16:00 UTC) this Friday, Jan 29th.
Please refer to the detailed information in the Call for Proposals:
http://astronomers.salt.ac.za/proposals/
As much of South Africa is grappling with drought, November and December of 2015
saw extremely good weather in Sutherland, astronomically speaking. The weather
downtime of 21% at SALT in the month of December was the lowest ever since SALT
records began. The seeing was also very good, the intrinsic V-band seeing at zenith
occasionally staying sub-arcsec for hours at a time. The picture shows a field
in the Large Magellanic Cloud taken during a SALTICAM science observation
for Warner 2015-2-SCI-033 with approximately 1.2" sizes of stars on the detector.
The weather in January in contrast has not been very good.
Nevertheless, at this point, with about 45% the semester 2015-2 behind us,
nearly half of allocated P0-P1 time has been done, as well as about a third
of all P2 time.
POLARIMETRY UPDATE
As described in the Call for Proposals, commissioning of the RSS Polarimetric modes
has been progressing, and we accept proposals for 2016-1 for a limited mode:
point-source or compact object targets for linear long-slit spectropolarimetry.
PIs interested in other modes are encouraged to let salthelp know of their intentions
for the purpose of prioritizing further commissioning.
However, we have recently uncovered a potential problem in the RSS detector (PDET)
electronics making accurate polarimetric signal determination difficult below
approximately 0.3% level. The problem is being investigated, and while we hope
a solution is found before the start of 2016-1 Semester in May, users needing
this accuracy should be aware of this potential limitation.
For now, we strongly recommend sticking with the Faint/Slow detector setting,
and obtaining repeat measurements to assess systematic error.
FABRY-PEROT UPDATE
The dual-etalon High Resolution (HR) mode has been tested on-sky, but is still
not in routine use due to instability in the relative alignment of the two etalons.
We have now traced the drifts to changes with temperature. Further tests are underway,
but unfortunately it is not clear at this stage when a successful fix will be ready.
We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience to all PIs affected in the current
semester. You may contact your liaison astronomer if you have other options
for your blocks, rather than wait for the fix.
Though we are hopeful, we cannot guarantee observations until commissioning
is finalized. We will accept new FP/HR proposals for 2016-1, but the PIs should
understand the uncertainty. In the Call for Proposals we suggest including
a back-up plan, if possible. We will update the FP users and the TACs
in late February during the technical reviews of proposals about the dual-etalon status.
As described in the Call of Proposals, the FP/LR and TF modes are in normal use,
while MR is currently off-line and is not offered for 2016-1.
UPGRADE PROJECTS AND 2015-2 TARGETS
There are many ongoing technical upgrade projects at SALT.
The most recent SALT schedule has the active primary mirror alignment system (SAMS)
integration and testing happening March onwards, an RSS service with up to 4 weeks
of telescope downtime in July/August during 2016-1, and a tracker upgrade during 2016-2.
Especially exciting is to see what SAMS will do for SALT image quality.
The SAMS work does not involve significant telescope downtime, while we had originally
scheduled a 4 week shutdown during the current 2015-2 semester. Since progress
with science programs has also been good, it is possible that gaps will develop
in the queue in March and April. We thus encourage users whose science allows it,
to update lists of optional targets in a given time allocation for the latter half
of 2015-2, or replace targets which have set with ones still visible.
LASER FREQUENCY COMB UPDATE
As reported in our previous status update and described in
http://www.salt.ac.za/news/laser-frequency-comb/
we will likely be doing HRS on-sky tests using a prototype laser frequency comb (LFC)
in the middle of this year. These instruments provide an incredibly precise method
to calibrate spectroscopy using tens of thousands of lines with well known wavelengths.
While the test is mainly an engineering project, it may be possible to do some limited
science observations. No separate proposals are called for this purpose,
but anyone within the SALT collaboration with interest and ideas on how to make use
of the capability on HRS in the short time period the LFC is available, is encouraged
to contact us at salthelp@salt.ac.za, preferably by the end of February.
SALT HELPS TO UNVEIL A RECORD-BREAKING COSMIC BLAST
Saurabh Jha, from Rutgers University, obtained spectroscopic observations of ASASSN-15lh
with SALT that led to it being identified as the most luminous supernova ever seen!
At a redshift of z = 0.2326, ASASSN-15lh reached an absolute magnitude
of Mu,AB = -23.5 ± 0.1. The results were reported by Dong et al. in a recent Science
paper, and the story has been mentioned in several major media outlets.
We strongly encourage SALT users to inform us of their papers making use
of any SALT data, and to please adhere to the Acknowledgements policy found under
the link above. It will make keeping track of the papers much easier.
The SALT Board has also requested that authors using SALT data make an effort
to make the source of their data as visible in their papers, e.g. by mentioning SALT
in the title, if appropriate, or in the abstract.
SALT papers found from ADS after the previous SALT update sent in late October
are listed below. These articles include the first one which has used published
HRS data.
Ninan et al. present a detailed study on the outbursting protostar V899 Mon;
the data used include the first HRS dataset to be published in a refereed paper.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015ApJ...815....4N
