NEID Proposals Solicited, Presentations Available

Heidi Schweiker, Jayadev Rajagopal (WIYN)

The NN-EXPLORE Program is soliciting proposals to use NEID, a new cutting-edge, high-precision spectrograph at the 3.5m WIYN telescope. Designed for radial velocity measurements of exoplanet host stars, NEID aims to deliver a velocity precision of 27 cm/s per data point and is expected to provide the US exoplanet community with the high-precision radial velocity measurements needed to detect Earth and super-Earth mass planets orbiting bright host stars over a wide range of spectral type. NEID will help fulfill needs foreseen at the time of the 2010 Decadal Survey and will provide timely follow-up observations in support of NASA’s TESS Mission. NOAO will operate NEID in a queue-scheduled mode and NExScI will provide pipeline data reductions of all observations in order to deliver high-level data products to PIs, including high-precision radial velocities.

Further information on proposing to use NEID can be found here.

Teleconference for Proposers

A teleconference open to all proposers or potential proposers for the NEID queue will be held on 14 March 2019 at 12:00 EDT/09:00 PDT (Daylight Savings Time). The telecon will be an opportunity to ask questions of the teams involved with NEID and NN-EXPLORE before proposals are due. The best way to have your questions answered is to submit your questions in advance! To receive notification and updates about this teleconference, please register by writing to neid_info@noao.edu with your email contact information and stating that you wish to participate in or are submitting questions for the teleconference.

NEID Splinter Session at the January AAS

Presentations from the NN-EXPLORE NEID Splinter Session at the January 2019 AAS meeting in Seattle are now available online. The session included the following presentations:

• Suvrath Mahadevan, the NEID PI at PSU, presented an overview and current status of the instrument.
• Jason Wright, Project Scientist at PSU, focused on the exciting science NEID can deliver.
• Jayadev Rajagopal, WIYN Scientist, summarized the Operations plan (including the queue).
• Rachel Akeson from NEXScI presented the data archive and pipeline capabilities.
• John Callas, Project Manager at NASA/JPL, concluded with a policy overview.