Semester 2021B Instrument Restrictions and Target Accessibility

This page provides best estimates, at the time of the Call for Proposals, of instrument restrictions and target (RA, DEC) accessibility for 2021B.

Gemini North Instrument Availability and Target Accessibility

All instruments are restricted for sky visibility as described in the Table below. In addition:

An engineering shutdown is scheduled for 25 nights starting August 9th 2021 and ending on September 3rd 2021, pending the COVID-19 situation. These nights are likely to not be available for time critical events. investigators with targets at RA 18 - 19 hours should have alternative targets available at later RAs.
Altair
UPDATE MARCH 24 2021: WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT THE LASER GUIDE SYSTEM IS OFFERED FOR THE 21B SEMESTER.
Altair is available in Natural Guide Star and Laser Guide Star mode in semester 2021B.
GNIRS is expected to be unavailable from September through to late October, for the IFU installation. Including the engineering shutdown, this means that GNIRS is only available for the months of November, December and January, in 2021B. Investigators with targets at RA 18 - 22 hours should have alternative targets available at later RAs.
'Alopeke and MAROON-X will be available, subject to demand, in the 2021B semester. Scheduling of these instruments will be driven by the demand.

	Accessible	Restricted^**	Inaccessible
Declination	-30° to +73°	-37° to -30°, +73° to +90°	< -37°
Declination, LGS	-22° to +65°	-27° to -22°, +65° to +68°	< -27° and > +68°
Right Ascension	20h to 11h	18h to 20h, 11h to 13.5h	13.5h to 18h
Right Ascension, LGS	21h to 10h	19h to 21h, 10h to 12.5h	12.5h to 19h

^**Due to limited sky availability during the semester, GMOS MOS programs requiring pre-imaging should not have targets in this region, and other programs with targets in this region should not require a large amount of time, or have strict timing or observing constraints.

Gemini South Instrument Availability and Target Accessibility

All instruments are restricted for sky visibility as described in the Table below. In addition:

An engineering shutdown is scheduled for 20 nights from October 12th 2021 to October 31st 2021, pending the COVID-19 situation. These nights are likely to not be available for time critical events, and the time available at RA 22 to 24 hours is expected to be reduced by 20%.
Due to greater-than-average, repeatable, weather loss in August and September at Gemini South, the availability of time at these RAs have been reduced: RA 18h - 20h by 15%, RA 21h - 23h by 8%, and RA 0h - 2h by 6%.
Observations using GeMS are restricted to greater than 45 degrees elevation. How this translates into RA and DEC restrictions is indicated in the Table. Expectation is to have two or three laser runs of 7 nights, therefore up to about 150 hours will be scheduled at ITAC (Queue only, Bands 1 & 2 with IQ70&IQ85).
Zorro and IGRINS will be available, subject to demand, in 2021B semester. Scheduling of these instruments will be driven by the demand.

	Accessible	Restricted^**	Inaccessible
Declination (non-LGS)	-87° to +22°	-90° to -87°, +22° to +28°	> +28°
Declination, GeMS + GSAOI	-70° to +10°	-75° to -70°, +10° to +15°	< -75° and > +15°
Right Ascension (non-LGS)	19h to 9h	16h to 19h, 9h to 12h	12h to 16h
Right Ascension, GeMS + GSAOI	20h to 8h	19h to 20h, 8h to 11h	11h to 19h

^**Due to limited sky availability during the semester, GMOS MOS programs requiring pre-imaging should not have targets in this region, and other programs with targets in this region should not require a large amount of time, or have strict timing or observing constraints.

Instrument and Instrument Configuration Restrictions

At each Gemini telescope, instruments are mounted at the Cassegrain focus on the instrument support structure (ISS). A science fold mirror mounted inside the ISS can be rotated to send the light from the telescope to any of four side-looking ports, or can be retracted so that the light goes to the up-looking port. At each site, the calibration unit and the Adaptive Optics system use two of the side ports, leaving two side-looking and one up-looking port for other instrumentation. As more than three instruments are offered each semester, instrument swaps are required and not all instruments will be available for the entire semester. Instrument swaps are driven by demand and scheduled to minimize impact on the queue. Certain targets or entire programs may not be feasible once the final schedule is determined, at ITAC or thereafter. If an instrument is requested for less than 6% of the Bands 1+2 time, the Observatory reserves the right to limit the RA range available to programs, or to not schedule the instrument. Changes to the instrument mounting are not permitted during classical runs.

Non-Sidereal Targets

Non-sidereal targets can have a broader range in RA than indicated in the Tables above due to, for example, the need to observe comets relatively close to the Sun. The ephemeris for any submitted target however must include a position that is accessible between evening and morning twilight at some point in the semester. For rapidly moving targets PIs should specify in the proposal when the target is accessible, and the coordinates of the target at that time, so that the observation can be checked for feasibility.

Time-Critical Observations

Gemini Observatory attempts to schedule all time-critical observations whenever possible within the constraints imposed by instrument availability, instrument configuration, weather, and science ranking band. Additionally, nights not scheduled for multi-instrument queue including classical and other observing modes, shutdowns, commissioning, etc., impose additional constraints on time-critical programs. Short observations (~1 hour) can often be accommodated during priority visitor periods. Programs with time-critical observations are asked to include detailed scheduling constraints with their proposal, such that they can be considered along with other constraints when developing the telescope schedule each semester.