CEDAR email: Friendly reminder: Arecibo Call for Proposals (ISR Observations): Thursday, September 6, 2018 Deadline

Fri Aug 31 09:00:25 MDT 2018

Arecibo Call for Proposals (ISR Observations): Thursday, September 6, 2018
Deadline

Dear Colleagues

(Please distribute this call to any colleagues who might be interested)

We extend an invitation for proposals for the use of the 430MHz Incoherent
Scatter Radar with a deadline for September 6, 2018 (17:00 AST, 21:00 UTC).
These petitions should be for the usage of the Incoherent Scatter Radar, as
well for the passive and active optical instruments. Once the request is
submitted and accepted, the same would be valid for six-month beginning
January 1, 2019 (or a year depending on the request), after which it will
need to be re-submitted to maintain validity. This call does NOT include
proposals for use of the HF Facility for ionospheric modification.

Information about observing proposals and policies can be found at
http://www.naic.edu/~astro/proposals/proposal.shtml. Proposals must be
submitted using the web-based cover form, which can be found online at
http://www.naic.edu/~astro/proposals/aoprop.php. For this deadline we have
enabled direct uploading of the PDF containing the main body of your
proposal via the proposal website. If you do not upload your PDF, you should
send it by separate email to proposal at naic.edu <mailto:proposal at naic.edu> .

Technical information about our facilities and instrumentation as well as
the contacts for specific support are found below. For any further
information not addressed in this communication you can contact Christiano
Brum (cbrum at naic.edu <mailto:cbrum at naic.edu> ).

We hope to obtain your proposals real soon and continue to do outstanding
research during the upcoming year as we have done in the past.

Sincerely,

Christiano Garnett Marques Brum

Deputy Director of Science Operations - Arecibo Observatory 

University Of Central Florida (UCF)

HC3 BOX 53995, Arecibo PR 00612 

787-878-2612x242

Technical information.

The 430 MHz Incoherent Scatter Radar.

The 430 MHz Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR) is capable of extremely sensitive
diagnostics of the ionosphere. Power from the pulsed 2.5 MW (about 1.3 to
1.5 MW) transmitter can be split with arbitrary ratio into two beams,
allowing sensing through the observing region simultaneously with sensing
outside of it or near its edge (Note: Currently, due to the damages caused
by the Hurricane Maria, we are running only one beam). Possible geometries
are set by the locations of the two feeds on opposite sides of the rotatable
azimuth arm, with the minimum zenith angle differences set by the physical
sizes of the feeds. Raw data can be collected with a 25 MHz wide data taking
system for later analysis while a narrower bandwidth system is used to
provide on line monitoring. The current coding technique allows 300 m range
resolution on the enhanced plasma line while ion line and natural plasma
line data are also recorded from the same radar pulses. There are some
restrictions in simultaneous viewing resulting from the extremely high
signal power in the enhanced plasma line. For further information you can
contact Michael Sulzer (msulzer at naic.edu <mailto:msulzer at naic.edu> ) or
Nestor Aponte (naponte at naic.edu <mailto:naponte at naic.edu> ).

Optical capability.

At Arecibo we have a variety of airglow and lidar instrumentation.
Presently, airglow sensing equipment includes two Tilting-Filter
Photometers, three Fabry-Perot Interferometers, and All-sky Imagers. These
instruments are located about 1000 feet from the center of the incoherent
scatter radar.

The "active" optical instruments (lidars) have the capability to monitor the
upper stratosphere to lower thermosphere. We have three systems, two of
which are configurable to monitor one each of the meteoric metals: Na, Fe,
Ca, or Ca+. Alternatively, one of the two metal lidars can be configured as
a Rayleigh lidar to measure temperature from the upper stratosphere to the
mesosphere, from about 35 to 70 km. The third lidar is a Doppler-resonance
lidar that measures temperatures within the metal layer by sensing the
Doppler broadening in the D1 resonance line of K.

Request for optical instrument support for ISR experiments must be included
in the proposal. We encourage the PIs to contact our staff for special
optical configurations and further information: Shikha Raizada
(shikha at naic.edu <mailto:shikha at naic.edu> ) or Jens Lautenbach
(jlautenbach at naic.edu <mailto:jlautenbach at naic.edu> ).

Arecibo Observatory Remote Optical Facility (AO-ROF).

The AO-ROF is located on Culebra Island (18o 18' 18"N; 65o 18' 05"W), Puerto
Rico, about 96 miles east of the Arecibo Observatory. The design of the
facility enables it to host two optical instruments requiring large domes
(5-ft diameter) and four optical instruments that require smaller domes
(1-ft diameter). Exterior space is also available for the installation of
radio receivers or other kinds of instrumentation.

For further information you can contact Pedrina Santos (pterra at naic.edu
<mailto:pterra at naic.edu> ) or Eva Robles (erobles at naic.edu
<mailto:erobles at naic.edu> ).

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