WIYN 3.5m Observatory

WIYN Status - Proposer Information

NOIRLab Time on WIYN

The NSF's NOIRLab will continue to offer access to WIYN and its instruments to the national community, albeit with a focus on research programs that are related to exoplanets. Interested observers should consult the NOIRLab Observing Proposal Call for details. This does not apply to people applying for time through WIYN's university partners.

Instrument availability

There are several key things to note about the availability of 3.5-m instruments:

NEID: The new, cutting edge, high-precision spectrograph designed for radial velocity measurements of exoplanet host stars will be available on WIYN. NEID is designed with a goal of achieving 27 cm/s precision per data point, providing the US exoplanet community with high-precision radial velocity measurements appropriate for studying Earth and super-Earth mass planets orbiting bright host stars over a wide range of spectral type. Other investigations that hinge on extreme RV precision can also make good use of NEID. The NOIRLab operates NEID in a queue scheduled mode and NExScI employs pipeline data reductions on all observations to provide PIs with high-level data products, including high-precision radial velocities.
Long-term proposals: NN-EXPLORE accepts proposals for large, long-term programs, defined as those that require between 2 and 4 semesters. A maximum of 8 nights per semester will be made available in total for all long-term programs.
Beginning in 2023B, for NEID only, to better account for nightly calibrations that are not incorporated into proposer overhead, proposers should assume that 1 night is equivalent to 9 hrs.
Further information about NEID, including how to propose for time, can be found within the NEID web pages.
ODI: ODI's filter slots are fully populated. We are no longer be supporting the use of Mosaic filters with ODI.
Additionally, flat-fielding is now done as a service to observers by observatory staff. Contact Wilson Liu for more information.
All other WIYN instruments aside from ODI share the second Nasmyth port, known as the Hydra port. Thus, (the IFUs)+WHIRC, WHIRC+Visitor Instruments, and Hydra are block scheduled. The switch between Hydra and the Instrument Adapter System (IAS) that supports the WIYN High-Resolution Infrared Camera (WHIRC), SparsePak, Hexpak, Gradpak, NESSI, and visitor instruments takes two to four days to complete. Normally there is one change from Hydra to the IAS and another switch back to Hydra each semester.
The two unique IFUs, HexPak and GradPak, will continue to be offered for shared-risk observing. These IFUs are distinguished by having different sized fibers in the same head to optimize the balance between surface brightness and signal-to-noise for various classes of extended objects. They were developed by Matt Bershady's group in Washburn Astronomical Laboratories at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As they are still PI-level, rather than facility, instruments, it is necessary to work with the PI before submitting a proposal to use the IFUs. Please read the introduction letters from the WIYN director and the instrument PI. More information and instructions on how to proceed can be found on the Hexpak and Gradpak web pages. SparsePak will continue to be offered as a facility instrument.
WHIRC: See the WHIRC Hot News for the latest updates.
The queue-operated speckle imager NESSI (NN-Explore Exoplanet Stellar Speckle Imager) will continue to be offered this semester.
The robotic fiber positioner (gripper) for the multi-object spectrometer, Hydra, was upgraded during the summer of 2021. Reconfigurations now take approximately half the time they did previously. For more information, contact the Instrument Scientist, Susan Ridgway.

Remote Observing

Remote observing at WIYN is available to all qualified observers (see the remote observing policies). Those wishing to observe remotely with ODI must do so from a pre-approved (and tested) workstation. More information can be found on the WIYN Remote Observing page.