Canadian Gemini Office News

March 22, 2026

By Eric Steinbring (Canadian Gemini Office, National Research Council Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics)

A Springtime Bounty of Telescope-Time Opportunities

Late March typically brings hope to Canadians that a bloom of springtime flowers is not too far off, and also that there will be many chances to plant for a new crop of telescope-time allocations:

• This starts with the monthly CfP for Fast Turnaround (FT) time, at noon Hawai’i Standard Time (HST) on 31 March. The FT Call is available . Those are short, small proposals that can easily be folded into the Band 1+2 queue during the next three months (and account for 10% of our partner share of time);

• On the same day (31 March) at 11:59PM HST is the deadline for full proposals to the Large and Long Program (LLP) and Subaru Intensive Program (SIP) 2026 Call. These are instead big proposals which need significant time, must be spread over many semesters, or both (and for which we devote 20% of our partner share of time);

• And then it’s the 2026B Regular Semester CfP, at 4 PM (PDT) / 7 PM (EDT) on 1 April. This accounts for the bulk of Canada’s available time on both telescopes. Look here for the Canada-specific information about that Call;

• It may be useful to keep in mind that you can also apply within that regular call (or anytime) for a Poor Weather (PW) program, if your bright targets can just happen to make use of a Band-4 allocation, i.e. they can pick from some combination of poor-seeing/cloudy/wet-skies; that time is not charged to Canada, as scheduled Band-1 to 3 queue partner-time programs are not observable then;

• Remember, you can always apply straight to Gemini for anything that makes a compelling scientific case, via Director’s Discretionary Time (DDT), which is a 5% off-the-top pool set aside from the partner shares. Perhaps our “Canadianess” gets in the way here, as we tend not to ask for this time (and reasonably, by weight we could be asking for something closer to our partner share in an ongoing basis), but it is freely offered to the world. Don’t be shy.

• And finally, related to DDT, the following may be of interest, if your particular scientific harvest anticipates sprouts from within the time domain:

Starting last semester Gemini launched a specific DDT program called “Once in a Rubin Gem.” This initiative has the Gemini Director allocating 120 hours over the next three years, specifically for the rapid follow-up of the most surprising and puzzling discoveries from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). It is focused on speculative targets unlikely to get approved via the regular TACs, but holding potential for exciting discoveries. This acts as a complement to other Rapid Target of Opportunity (RToO) programs, and all data will be made public immediately. See https://www.gemini.edu/observing/phase-i-proposing-time/dd-initiatives for more information, and contacts.