Yo yo yo.
Don't forget the Hubble Cycle 16 Supplemental is due at 11:59 pm sharp, and that is Eastern Standard Time, not some laid back later west coast time.
Rumour is that NICMOS did not come back from the warmup during restart, and that it will be WFPC2 and ACS Solar Blind Channel only.
Unless someone comes up with a fast remote fix for NIC and fast.
In other worthy nibblets, NASA now has May 12 as the target launch date for the Hubble 4th Servicing Mission
In unrelated news, the Mars Science Lab will miss the 2009 launch slot and bump to 2011, at a cost of something like $400 million.
Not clear where the money will come from, as the uncertainty in the current NASA budget is larger than this amount - likely to come from SMD and maybe from within planetary exploration, either through more mission stretching, and cumulative cost increases, or through cancellation of a smaller mission, or two.
In totally unrelated news, CNN cut its science reporting sub-department.
Including Miles O'Brien, who is actually rather good.
CNN will apparently now consist exclusively of reruns of Anderson Cooper specials, Celebrity News and Opinion Ranters. Unless you can get the CNN International Channel where they still report actual news as it happens, but only in the middle of the night.
Science reporting in the US will soon be done exclusively by Overbye at NYT, the eight freelancers that the monthly glossies can afford, and 42 part time bloggers.
Oh, and Alan Stern wrote and interesting editorial for NYT in case you missed it back when.
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I have always said `Globular Clusters are Way Cool'
That is too bad that CNN is dropping the science ball here. Certainly NOT good news, and O'Brien was good!
Doh!
I am having a weird sense of deja vu.
I am writing a proposal for WFPC2.
The economy is in the toilet.
At least Bush is no longer president so we should see fewer wars.
I am sure the chronology is wrong, but still....
Gorgeous image. They had six different camera/filter combinations, and they made some really neat interesting choices on the color assignments. For ACS they did the usual (I,V,B) = (R,G,B). But then for WFPC2, they made V cyan/blue and I a golden-yellow color. The contrast of the blue and gold colors is really striking. Great!
Should we start compiling numbers? My submission was around 8:30 EST and came up as 2187. (I really hope they started at 2000 or above)
Should we start compiling numbers? My submission was around 8:30 EST and came up as 2187. (I really hope they started at 2000 or above)
Good lord, I hope so!
2224 at 7:10...errr...10:10 EST
At the same stage for Cycle 17's deadline, the submission count was exponential and dN/dlogT was something like 500 (going from 400 to 700 between H-minus-7 hours and H-minus-2 hours. Between our proposals, it incremented 37 from H-minus-3.5 to H-minus-1.84 (dN/dlogT=133). Extrapolating backward to 100 hours (would anybody have submitted before Friday?), we get that there were 194 submitted before mine (#2187). Therefore, 2000 seems like a good assumption for a starting point.
Must have started around 2050 - we had 2079 and submitted early thanks to well organized Europeans.
That is still WAY too many - minimum was 120 orbits... they'll take maybe 20 proposals? With a backup of another 10-20 in case the SM4 is delayed...
Er, lots of NIC proposals in the pile, eh?
Anyone?
The minimum is 75, or else something that is "high impact" or "high risk/high reward". If they're offering 1200 orbits, then I'd bet on 10-12 "large" programs and a similar number of smaller programs.
(Random aside: How many scientists will admit that they work on something "low impact"?)
The minimum was 75, not 120, for "normal programs". If you had a really exciting high risk, high gain program, you could go shorter.
And, yea, I am sure there are some NIC proposals. I mean, submit 'em if ya got 'em. Maybe the instrument will work?
Random aside: How many scientists will admit that they work on something "low impact"?
Folks working on preventing the earth being smacked by comets or asteroids....
Time for another reread.
Did anybody else write a completely new proposal, or is it going to be mostly retreads?
Every proposal is a new proposal...
So, time's up.
Who has the high number?
Any west coasters out there?
I think we can assume they started at round 2000 as E estimated, and with 3-4 months of empty slots, we're looking at at least 20 medium/large proposals selected, and maybe 30-40 total in the end if some "risky" small ones come in, or SM4 is stretched.
Unless they pick one or two multi-hundred orbit megaprojects...
I know someone who came in at 8PM PST and said "I am not done with my figures yet"
I will ask him.
2279 at 11:53 PM
That is a lot of 75+ orbit programs.
I wonder how many people read the call.
2284 at right around midnight. A collaborator actually hit the submit button so I don't know the exact time.
Yikes.
Heard third hand that the oversubscription rate is 12:1
That is after throwing out all the NIC proposals...
That is orbit oversubscription.
So... I am hoping that is because a small number of proposals are asking for very large numbers of orbits.
Actually if there were about 300 proposals, then that is not necessary - depends on how many weeks the supplemental is for of course, and the scheduling efficiency, but 12:1 could easily be consistent with about 100 orbits per proposal on average.
Bummernickels.
12:1, yech, but it matches the numbers. The call said something like 1000-1200 orbits for a mid-April SM4, but with SM4 in mid-May, that should go up a bit.
As the discussion went this morning, "all of the easy WFPC2 stuff has been done, and so a lot of people took their 20-30 orbit ACS programs and turned them into 80-90 orbit WFPC2 programs."
If you ask for 75-orbit proposals, you're going to get 75-orbit proposals, whether the science demands them or not. This will be true as long as proposals still come with research funding. It's not necessarily a good way of reducing the burden on the TAC, unless the TAC simply triages everything that is an obvious bloat, and punts on trying to make fine distinctions about which proposals, bloated or not, are the best science.
I didn't submit a proposal, though if NICMOS had come back, I would have.
While reading the Supplemental Call, did anyone else inhale milk through their nose at the example "high-risk, high-impact" program of looking for bioluminescence on Jupiter's moons? or just me?
I decided to ditch my "low impact" science, and look for TRIBOluminescence on Jupiter's moons. Not only is there life there, but it eats wintogreen lifesavers.
I'll be curious to see how much the TAC weighs post-SM4 capabilities (i.e. using WFPC2/NICMOS for ACS/WFC3 programs). There are a few types of observations (like FGS science, certain narrowband optical filters, and high-contrast optical imaging) that won't be upgraded much, so it makes sense to get them out of the way now.
methinks a lot of FGS science just got done in the last few weeks...
There is not a lot of capability unique to WFPC2 - I am hoping the TAC decides high contrast mid-UV imaging is one of them.
Would be good to get done.
A lot of stuff is better done with WFC3 or ACS if it is fixed.
Ah well, the TAC giveth and the TAC taketh away.
I think we can trust the TAC to be wise.
JD has a post over at CV, with interesting and specific statistics
Just in case anyone missed it.
Given that the telescope is held together with bailing wire and string at the moment, I think we're in double digit probability of the repair mission not being successful. And thus, while much of what was proposed was probably science that could be done better with WFC3 or ACS, it's always better to science on a system that actually, you know, exists.
And yeah, I couldn't believe 280 proposals. I put in two brand new ones, which was nuts given that classes weren't over and all kinds of Personal Crap was going down. I knew I was insane, but didn't realize how many other people were too.
Ben's also right that there are going to be a lot of plumped up 30 orbit proposals, stumbling around wearing their dad's suits and their mom's high heels, trying to look very grown up.