NICMOS STScI Analysis Newsletter 25
June 2001
CONTENTS:
- NICMOS NEWS
+ Cycle 11 Call for Proposals
+ NICMOS Calibration Proposals Candidates
+ New Version of the NICMOS Instrument Handbook
+ Performance of the NICMOS ETC Against Archived Data
- RECENT PREPRINTS
- APPENDIX: NICMOS CONTACTS
============================================================================
NICMOS NEWS
-----------
Cycle 11 Call for Proposals
----------------------------------------------------------
Hubble Space Telescope Cycle 11 Call for Proposals
NASA and The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) are pleased to
announce the Cycle 11 Call for Proposals for Hubble Space Telescope
(HST) Observations, Archival Research and Theoretical Research.
Participation in this program is open to all categories of
organizations, both domestic and foreign, including educational
institutions, profit and nonprofit organizations, NASA Centers, and
other Government agencies. This solicitation will be open from June 11,
2001 through September 7, 2001 8:00pm EDT, and proposals may be
submitted throughout this period. Results of the selection will be
announced in December 2001.
All programmatic and technical information, as well as specific
guidelines for proposal preparation, are available electronically from
the STScI World-Wide Web site at the Announcement Web Page with URL:
http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/proposer/cycle11/announce.html
Questions can be addressed to the STScI Help Desk (email:
help@stsci.edu; phone: 410-338-1082).
NICMOS Calibration Proposals Candidates
---------------------------------------
We also remind our readers of the opportunity to submit proposals
for calibration projects. STScI does not have the resources to
calibrate fully all potential capabilities of all instruments. On the
other hand, the astronomical community has expressed interest in receiving
support to perform calibrations for certain uncalibrated or poorly
calibrated modes, or to develop specialized software for certain HST
calibration and data reduction tasks. Calibration proposals for
Cycle 11 will follow the normal GO proposal process, requiring
evaluation and approval by the TAC. More details can be found at:
http://www.stsci.edu/proposer/cy11/documents/online/cp11TOC.html
Potential calibration proposals for NICMOS include polarimetry,
photometric transformations, etc. Interested proposers are encouraged to
study the NICMOS Instrument Handbook (to determine the calibration and
characterization goals for Cycle 11) and to contact the NICMOS group at STScI
to discuss their ideas.
New Version of the NICMOS Instrument Handbook
--------------------------------------------
edited by A. Schultz et al.
Version 4.1 of the Instrument Handbook is now available, at
http://www.stsci.edu/gci-bin/NICMOS/si.pl
under both Documents and Proposing.
The major revision since Version 4.0 consists in an update of the expected
operating temperature range of NICMOS with the Nicmos Cryocooler System.
Performance of the NICMOS ETC Against Archived Data
---------------------------------------------------
Megan Sosey
A robust test of the newest version of the NICMOS Exposure Time
Calculator(ETC) was conducted in order to assess its performance against
actual NICMOS datasets in predicting an accurate signal-to-noise ratio for
observation planning. All data used for the analysis were gathered from
the HST archive and span the initial operating temperature of the
instrument (61.5K - 62.5 K). The ETC was accurate in predicting
the SNR of bright point sources and predicted good SNR's for bright and
faint galaxies: the predicted and measured SNRs were within 20% of each
other and sometimes better than 10%. NICMOS users in cycle 11 and beyond
should expect to use this version of the ETC to aid in calculating
exposure times for their programs. For complete details on the analysis
and more information on specific changes made to the ETC code please see
NICMOS ISR-2001-01.
=============================================================================
RECENT PREPRINTS
----------------
We draw your attention to these papers, based on NICMOS data, that
will appear in the next few months. This list includes all preprints
received by the STScI Library not yet published in the journals.
Please remember to include our Library in your preprint distribution list.
BOKER, T.; BACINSKI, J.; BERGERON, L.; CALZETTI,
D.; JONES, M.; GILMORE, D.; HOLFELTZ, S.; MONROE,
B.; NOTA, A.; SOSEY, M.; SCHNEIDER, G.; O'NEIL, E.;
HUBBARD, P.; FERRO, A.; BARG, I.; STOBIE, E.
"Properties of PACE01 HgCdTe Detectors in Space -
the NICMOS Warm-Up Monitoring Program" PASP accepted
MAOZ, D.; BARTH, A.J.; HO, L.C.; STERNBERG, A.;
FILIPPENKO, A.V. "An Ultraviolet through Infrared
Look at Star Formation and Super Star Clusters in
Two Circumnuclear Starburst Rings" AJ 6-01
============================================================================
APPENDIX: NICMOS Contacts
-------------------------
Analysis, STSDAS or any other HST-related questions can be
addressed to help@stsci.edu.
============================================================================
To subscribe or unsubscribe send a message to majordomo@stsci.edu with
the Subject: line blank and the following in the body:
[un]subscribe nicmos_news
============================================================================
Comments, questions, suggestions, etc. can be e-mailed to help@stsci.edu.
============================================================================
The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of
Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract
NAS5-26555.
============================================================================
