GHOST System Verification Update

Raw data taken for the GHOST System Verification (SV) run (10–18 May 2023) are now publicly available through the archive. Details on the instrument setup and the science case for each dataset are presented on the GHOST SV webpage. A total of 40 hours of observing time was used by SV. Observations were taken from 7 SV programs, which were organized into the following science topics: galactic metal-poor stars, transmission spectroscopy of hot exoplanets, white dwarfs and symbiotic stars, binary star systems, chemical abundances of ultra-faint dwarf Milky Way satellites, low-metallicity early-type stars in a Local Group dwarf irregular, and extragalactic compact systems. The SV Instrument Science team is currently reducing and analyzing these data using a test version of the GHOST data reduction pipeline. Within the next month, the reduced data will be added to the archive and the evaluation of the data will be presented on the GHOST SV website.

We expect that having this raw and reduced data available will help users prepare their science cases for the upcoming Shared Risk Call for Proposals, planned for release on 1 September for observations to be taken in the period November 2023 to January 2024, and for the 24B regular Call for Proposals. Please also stay tuned for several upcoming webinars, which will cover GHOST capabilities along with proposal and observation preparation. The SV team members will also present the results from their observations in these webinars.