Guide for Visiting Astronomers
Dear Observer,After you have successfully proposed for NOT time, you will travel to the Canary Islands to obtain your data. This document offers a number of suggestions and guidelines to the visiting astronomer to make his or her observing run as painless and as productive as possible.As we do not have night assistants you will need to know how to open, close, and in general operate the telescope. Therefore, please do not forget to also read through the Observers Cookbook for a comprehensive guide to telescope operations. It is also a good idea to read the NOT FAQ, which contains most of the information, you will be given during your introduction to the telescope. If you would like to give a 30-minute presentation of your work to the telescope staff and interested astronomers on La Palma, then we will be delighted to host this presentation/seminar. We are always interested to hear about visiting observer's work and will be happy to discuss our own. The seminar programme is jointly organised by TNG and NOT, and seminars are given in our new office in San Antonio. Please contact John Telting if you would like to make a presentation. Please help us show that the Nordic community does high quality work with its telescope! Travel & AccommodationNB: Visiting observers are expected to make their own way to the observatory, and should rent their own car.During the winter and/or when the weather is bad we strongly advise people to contact the reception at the observatory (email: receporm@iac.es, phone: +34-92-405-500, mobile +34-609-554-576) before driving up. In general, the reception at the observatory should be contacted in case you have any doubts about travelling to the observatory, or between the Residencia and the telescope. The car is necessary not only for transport between the airport and the observatory, but also for transport between the telescope and the Residencia (several km on steep, winding mountain roads) at the beginning and end of night and possibly at other times as well. We do not have staff to provide such transportation, and observers will also need to be able to reach safety in the Residencia in case of a sudden (snow)storm. See also Observers Health & Safety. General Information about the Island, including maps, can be found here.
Car rental agencies::
Other major rental agencies (e.g. Hertz, AVIS) are also available on La Palma. Several of them can be found in the arrival hall at the airport.
Hotel accommodation:
Budget Accommodation in Santa Cruz de La Palma:
Accomodation and Meals at the Observatory: In case of problems with the bookings at Residencia, you may ask for our help contacting Raquel Lopez or Loida Fernandez Tel. +34 922 181114, Fax +34 922 434444 Temporary placement in Spain formIf you are going to work at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory for more than 8 days in a row, you must send a written notification of the temporary placement as a foreigner worker to the Spanish authorities before your arrival in the island, according to article 5 of Law 45/99 of the 29th November. The form you need to send is here: ODT PDF
Address: Or by fax: 34-922473746
What to Bring
Visiting astronomers should bring:
Run PreparationIt is probably unnecessary to remind you of the need for adequate run preparation. This includes filling out the NOT Instrument Request Form (NIRF), a list of target coordinates, finder charts, calibration sources and standard stars. Some documentation is available at the telescope, including a couple of atlases, and the WWW will provide you with everything else you could need. However, the WWW is not always reliable, and we might not have the specific atlases you want, so please come prepared with the appropriate minimum material. NOT astronomy staff can advise you on the normal calibration requirements of our instruments, but they may not be experts on your particular scientific needs. The details of your observing run are communicated to support staff via the NOT Instrument Request Form (NIRF, and usually pronounced as the word "nerf"). The support astronomer will use the contents of your submitted NIRF to configure your requested instrument, or from the information provided in your proposal if no NIRF is received. This will normally be done on the afternoon of the first night of your run, but some iteration with you may be necessary to establish the exact configuration if there are any ambiguities or special requests. Your support astronomer will not normally contact you before you submit a NIRF. It is therefore important that you fill out your NIRF well before the run, at latest, two weeks before your run. The NIRF has a box for you to indicate any special requirements you might have. Please think carefully here and note down anything which you think might help us. Do you have special access needs, or health problems? If so, note them here. Visiting astronomers are expected to make their own way to the Observatory, this means renting a car. If you cannot, for whatever reason, please say so here. We offer a service by which you can create a catalogue of object coordinates over the WWW which is made available at the telescope after you submit it. We also have a facility by which you can check the visibility of your objects during your run. Your run can be made much more efficient and nasty surprises avoided by using these. One point cannot be too strongly stated: READ THE DOCUMENTATION! The NOT's primary documentation source is the WWW. This may not be perfect, but there is certainly a great deal of information available with which we would like you to be familiar before arrival. Some of it may not become clear until you actually see the telescope, instrument or user interfaces, but you should make an effort to have an abstract idea of how things work. Observers Health & SafetyPlease read carefully through our Health & Safety Document before arriving at the telescope. Upon arrivalBefore driving up the mountain (especially in winter) check the condition of the road by phoning either our San Antonio Office (922 181114), the Residencia (922 405000) or the telescope (922 405663). Your support astronomer will meet you at the telescope around 15:00 in Winter time and around 16:00 in Summer time on the first day of your observing run. You will then be introduced to the telescope and instrument. Do not be afraid to ask questions! Visiting astronomers are expected to run the telescope and instrument on their own after the introduction, and you should be fully confident that you can do this before letting your suppport astronomer retire for the night. Note that at least one staff member is always present on the mountain and your introducing astronomer and the astronomer in charge are always reachable by mobile phone for the duration of your run. Also, you can consult the NOT FAQ, if you have any questions. Facilities
Facilities on the ORM:
Facilities at the sea level office (SLO): Visitors can connect their laptops to our network, or work at a station, for instance to reduce their data, make use of the archived data, and visit the other occupants of the building, the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) Computer PolicyThe following is our policy for use of NOT computers by short term visitors. Following these rules will help protect our site's security and your observations:
Data Handling and Archiving
As of April 2019 the raw, and potentially the reduced, data are
written automatically to the NOT archive. Note that there is a 1-year proprietary period imposed on all the scientific data. After this period, all data are publically accessible.
Access to raw/reduced data older than 1 year can be found through our
portal to the NOT data
archive. General information on NOT FITS-headers can be found here. Problems at the telescopeIf you run into problems, look first for information at the NOT FAQ page. If this does not solve your problem, do not hesitate to call our technical or astronomy support. Above all, do not attempt to do anything with the hardware or software which is not part of its normal operation. Rebooting computers, removing access panels, resetting fuses, etc. should be left to the staff. Even if it is obvious to you what the problem is and how to fix it, do not do so without at least informing a member of NOT staff. To improve the operation of the telescope, please fill in a Fault report in case you encounter any problem. The NOT is one of the most reliable telescopes in the world. Nevertheless, we do occasionally experience problems and this may happen during your observing run. If it does, please be as patient as you can, our staff will do their best to get you back on the sky as soon as humanly possible. Service and override programmesAs part of its remit, the NOT executes a number of service and override observing programmes. These may interrupt your own observations. If they do, you will be told the exact limits of time which the programmes may absorb and after they have been completed, the telescope will be returned to you. Occasionally, visiting astronomers themselves are asked to make the required observations. If so, you will be provided with complete instructions and you will never be asked to do anything which is beyond your competence. We realise that it can be frustrating to have some of your scheduled telescope time taken away by a service or override programme. Nevertheless, you are awarded NOT time on the understanding that this may happen. The local NOT staff are not to blame. If you have a problem with the policy, we recommend you communicate your grievance to the director (Thomas Augusteijn). Closure conditionsAs part of your introduction, you will be told the weather conditions under which you must actively protect the telescope from possible damage. These include wind speed, humidity and dust limits for closing the side ports, observing downwind, and closing up the telescope. The telescope control system includes a facility for automatically forcing the telescope to point downwind, or close the dome if these parameters are exceeded for a significant amount of time. There is some leeway here so that you may, for example, complete a particularly important exposure before abiding by the closedown rules. However, if you wait too long, you will be overridden anyway, and the night logs will show that an automatic override was instigated. It is rare that observers are found to abuse the telescope in this manner and we do not mean to be draconian with these automatic measures. However, we are proud and protective of our telescope and aim to maintain it in top condition for all our observers. Bad weatherIf the weather gets really bad, do not stay at the telescope, go down to the residencia. Particularly if it is wet and then freezes, it can be very difficult, even dangerous to attempt any movement to or from the telescope. In general, don't take unnecessary risks, your safety is more valuable to us than one night's data! End of Night ReportAt the end of each night's observing, we ask you to complete an end-of-night report. This includes pulldowns to indicate the rough amount of time lost to any problems and the observing conditions you encountered. There are also three text fields in which we ask you to summarise problems, comments and results you obtained. Specific details of problems should be submitted in a Fault report. These fault reports can be submitted at any time. End of Run ReportAt the end of the run, there is one last report we ask you to file: the end-of-run report. This little report is one of the most important but least appreciated parts of your run. It is the primary route by which we measure the degree of satisfaction, or frustration, experienced by our observers. It is your opportunity to make your feelings about the NOT known, good or bad. Please take that opportunity. If you do not, we cannot know how to improve for your next visit and we do not know what we are doing right already. Again, it might be unfair to ask you to fill this form out with any degree of eloquence at the end of your last night's observing, particularly if you have had an unproductive run. Therefore, you can also wait until the next day, or even your return to your home institute. Above all, please say something, even if it is just to say how good or bad the coffee was, at least then we know you notice us! Accessing the NOT archiveShould your copy of the data suffer any accident, we can send you a replacement copy from the archive.
Credit NOT in published papersDocumenting the published scientific output from the NOT is an important part of our reporting duties and essential for our continued existence. Therefore, authors who publish papers wholly or partially based on data collected at the NOT MUST credit the use of the telescope with the following acknowledgement:"Based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, owned in collaboration by the University of Turku and Aarhus University, and operated jointly by Aarhus University, the University of Turku and the University of Oslo, representing Denmark, Finland and Norway, the University of Iceland and Stockholm University at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias."
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