THE UNITED KINGDOM INFRARED TELESCOPE
ANNUAL REPORT
1997

3.6. Other Developments

3.6.1. Service Observing

The Service programme continues to be popular with 81 proposals submitted in 1997 in addition to the significant backlog of proposals remaining due to poor weather during the previous year. Sixty proposals were completed within the year. Twenty-five percent of proposals were completed within six months of submission. At least 14 publications in refereed journals included Service data, which was 17% of UKIRT's total number of publications; the number roughly matches the output during 1996. In 1997 S. Ridgway of Oxford University retired as a referee and was replaced by G. Wright of ROE. The other referees are T. Geballe, T. Moore and T. Naylor.

3.6.2. Reactive Scheduling

This programme of making additional time available to the most highly rated science projects if these were adversely affected by poor weather or technical problems was continued, although because of the large allocation of engineering nights no dedicated time for it was allocated by PATT. However, some time for reactive scheduling became available because of the postponement or cancellation of some engineering work and this was put to good use in completing programmes for Drs Meaburn, Pettini, Rawlings, and Mobasher.

3.6.3. Newsletter

The first edition of the UKIRT Newsletter was published on the worldwide web in June and mailed to astronomical libraries in the U.K.. In the future the Newsletter will be published twice per year, shortly before each PATT deadline.