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PATT ITAC Report for Semester 94B Allocations The individual partner TAGs hold meetings in their respective countries prior to the PATT session to assess applications from their own country. At these meetings informal numbers of shifts are nominated for each application in a priority order. The Chairpersons of each TAG bring their respective lists to the PATT where the ITAC combine the awards, include discussion of the engineering and commissioning requirements and assess the international applications. The final allocations of shifts are made by the ITAC.
Applications to be consideredThe PATT meeting for semester 94B was held at The Falcon Hotel in Stratford upon Avon, UK on 2nd & 3rd June 1994. It should be noted that if the PI on an application is a JCMT staff member based in Hilo, then the application is assessed by the appropriate national TAG. However, by Board rule, International status is given to any application where the only named collaborator from any partner country is such a JCMT staff member. International applications are assessed by the Chairpersons of the national TAGs at the ITAC meeting.
Time Available (in 16-hour nights)The above table indicates the order in which nights are removed from the total available for the semester. Semester 94B covers a winter period from 1st August 1994 through 31st January 1995 inclusive. The JCMT is not open for observing on the night of Christmas Eve.
Awards 16-hour nightsThe number of successful applications was 62. For interest, the spread of these applications was 3 solar system, 12 stellar, 27 galactic and 20 extra-galactic. The average length of time awarded per application was 4.1 shifts. For those not familiar with the JCMT Board formula, the total time requested is divided amongst the PI and collaborators. 50% of the time is awarded to the country paying the salary of the PI. The remaining 50% is divided equally over ALL investigators (including the PI).
Attribute by JCMT Board formula nightsThe International attribution of nights again come out much higher than those from direct PI calculation. This indicates that a significant fraction of time is being awarded to collaborations with non-partner co-investigators but with a member of the partner consortium being PI on the applications.
Instrument distributionThere is a strong interest in use of the C-band receiver with a corresponding drop in requests for B-band. The reduction in allocation of time for UKT14 is due to reduced request (see below). Observers are anxiously awaiting the arrival of SCUBA to continue their programmes. Long-Term Status Application L/M/94A/U19, approved for long-term status for three semesters, was given 3 shifts. Since the continuum instrument may be changed during Semester 95A an observing report and re-estimate of the integration times may be required at the next UK-TAG meeting. Engineering & Commissioning The engineering & commissioning time for 94B involves considerable work to improve the surface accuracy and receiver efficiencies as well as further modifications to the SMU and rewiring work on the computer room. No time has been allocated for commissioning of RxB3 or SCUBA. Further details on the progress of these instruments will be made available as soon as possible through the JCMT_INFOfile server and national information distribution systems. Observatory Backup Programme The Observatory Backup (M/94B/I09) was given Long Term status for 2 semesters for CO (2-1) and 13CO (2-1) mapping of the nominated sources and any others suggested to the ITAC as long as there is no conflict with future allocations. All partners agreed to use this programme as a `last resort' backup when the weather deteriorates sufficiently to prevent observers using their own allocated backup but not sufficiently to justify closing the observatory. Service time
Allocations for this semester are:Changes to Semester Numbering By the new convention, semesters that run from February through July are designated as `A' and those running from August through Janaury as `B'. These are to be preceded by the last two digits from the year. Therefore the current semester from Aug'94 through Jan'95 is known as 94B. Applications for the forth-coming semester should refer to semester 95A. Redesign of the JCMT Application form A new design of application for observing time form, more appropriate for the JCMT and which can be common to the partner countries, is under discussion. Items specific to a particular country will be allocated their own layout on a separate page. The process is well under way with a new form (PATT3) now being formatted but it is unlikely to be available for use before semester 95B. Shortfall of UKT14 Applications Following the announcement that SCUBA would be delivered to the telescope in Semester 94B, the continuum instrument UKT14 was only offered to the community for observations during the first half of the semester. Since SCUBA will now not be delivered in Semester 94B, the ITAC decided to issue a further call for proposals for the use of UKT14 during the second half of Semester 94B. This call has now been completed and the application are undergoing processing via the normal procedures in order to fill the allocated slot. In the case of the UK community this is a 26 shift (roughly 13 full night) period in January. The other partners will use time out of their service allocations for this purpose. Graeme Watt (ITAC Technical Secretary), ROE
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