Start of P83

April 1st was the deadline for submission of observing proposals for ESO telescopes. I managed to submit my main proposal quite early on, the other collaborative ones were done last minute , while some new projects which looked like a good idea came to a halt once we started writing the proposals. That was when we realised that we havnt quite done enough background work before we can justify asking for time on the big telescopes…that happens!

Even though we applied for new data, I have quite a lot of data already collected from various telescopes. They will get analysed at some point – just not quite sure when! There are no other deadlines for me in the next few months, so I hope to get a bit of that past data studied and hopefully written into an article with in that time too – I think I am being very optimistic here esp. if there are interuptions from the children, sickness, etc.. but I guess it helps to think positive – well thats what I say to myself 🙂

So April 1st was the deadline for new proposals, it is also the official start of a new observing period (number 83) at ESO (P83). The deadline for proposal submission was for P84 – which will start in October. For P83, most programs were already selected and approved by us USD astronomers. Yesterday all the P83 programs that were in the database queue classified as ‘next’ was updated to ‘open’, so that the night astronomers atParanal can see them on the mountain. Now its their job to execute these runs. The programs from the past period 82 are now closed or in some cases carried over to the new period. If there are any problems with the programs for P83 once they start observing I will surely get a ticket to check it out. Lets see how many tickets I get for this period….