Over the next two months the LMT will host a series of short Webinar meetings with the scientific communities of the LMT partners in Mexico and the U.S.

Webinar meetings with the scientific communities of the LMT partners

The LMT is currently preparing to return to scientific operation after closing in late March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the next two months the LMT will host a series of short Webinar meetings with the scientific communities of the LMT partners in Mexico and the U.S.

Updated information will be provided related to the current status of the LMT project, the telescope infrastructure, as well as the forthcoming opportunity to submit new open-time scientific proposals to the LMT. Members of the LMT scientific and technical teams will also describe a range of engineering initiatives that will improve the performance and operational efficiency of the telescope, and summarize the capabilities of the current and future suite of scientific instrumentation.

Dates and topics:

September 30, 2020: Operations Planning

The first meeting covered the following topics: Current status of LMT; Future LMT operations and development; Call for Open-Time Observing Proposals; User-community Q&A session. The meeting was recorded and is available here.

LMT Community Day 1 Presentation by Dr. David H. Hughes
LMT Operations Planning Presentation by Dr. F. Peter Schloerb
Q&A discussion

October 16, 2020: US Community Access to the Large Millimeter Telescope – A “Kick off” Meeting.

The US National Science Foundation Mid-Scale Innovation Program is now supporting access to the LMT for any astronomer located at a US institution. This meeting has been designed to provide members of this new user community with a general introduction to the LMT and its instruments and with an overview of the LMT’s plans for science user support in the coming years. The meeting was recorded and is available here.

LMT Community Day 2 Presentation by Dr. David H. Hughes
LMT User Support Presentation by Dr. F. Peter Schloerb

October 30, 2020: Proposal Opportunity for March 2021-September 2021.

This fall there will be a proposal opportunity for scientific observations in the March 2021-September 2021 time frame. This meeting described the proposal opportunity and provided information to prospective users about proposal submission and review procedures. It also described the set of instruments to be made available in the proposal call and the status of software that will be available for reduction of data from these instruments. The meeting was recorded and is available here.

LMT Community Day 3 Presentation by Dr. David H. Hughes
LMT online tool for proposal submission Presentation by Dr. Alfredo Montaña
Proposal Review and Time Allocation Process Presentation by Dr. Grant Wilson
LMT instrumentation Presentations by Dr. F.Peter Schloerb, Dr. Min Yun, and Dr. Arturo Gómez-Ruiz

November 13, 2020: New Instruments for the LMT

This meeting described several new LMT instruments due to be commissioned during the 2020-2021 observing season at the LMT, including the TolTEC instrument. The status and expected schedule for installation of instruments will be described along with plans for data reduction pipelines. The meeting was recorded and is available here.

LMT Community Day 4 Presentation by Dr. David H. Hughes
TolTEC Presentation by Dr. Grant Wilson
OMAyA Presentation by Dr. Gopal Narayanan

December 4, 2020: Future Telescope Engineering and Performance Upgrades

This meeting described future telescope engineering and performance upgrades to take place during 2021. The meeting was recorded and is available here.

LMT Performance Presentation by Dr. F.Peter Schloerb
Toward Daylight Observing at the LMT Presentation by Dr. F.Peter Schloerb
LMT Segment Upgrade Program Presentation by Dr. David M. Gale