YROF Allocation Policy

Scheduling

  • Please note that the Yale Keck Remote Observing Facility is a private facility owned by Yale.  
  • Observers shall apply for the use of the YROF following standard procedures for mainland observing no less than 4 weeks prior to their observing run.  In order to reduce stress on our remote observing resources, we need to enforce this 4-week window.   For routinely scheduled observing runs that do not make their request before the 4-week window, a late request fee of $100 will be charged if the run is approved.
  • If the criteria for allocation of the YROF, below, are met, and the facility has not already been booked at the time of request, the YROF will be booked from 6p Eastern Time in the evening of each observing night (12n/1p Hawaii time) until 1p Eastern Time the next day (7a/8a Hawai’i Time).
  • If below criteria are met, the party that applies first will take precedence over the other.
  • The Director of Yale Research Observatories (“DYRO”) is the arbiter of any scheduling conflict disputes.

Criteria

  • WMKO currently requires that at least one member of the mainland team have previous (and preferably recent) experience with operating the scheduled instrument.
  • WMKO also requires IT support from Yale to be available (on call, but also available to come in if necessary) for the duration of the run.  If no one on the Yale support team is available, the run will not be approved.  This is a rare situation.
  • All instruments can be supported, with the exception of the Keck interferometer.