Announcements
Announcements
Commissioning of instruments
|
instrument |
commissioning |
friendly user experiments |
|
Echidna |
commenced |
May - July |
|
Koala |
start in February |
May - July |
|
Wombat |
start in February |
May - July |
|
Kowari |
start in April |
June - Aug |
|
Platypus |
start in May |
Aug - Oct |
|
Quokka |
start in June |
Sept - Nov |
|
Taipan |
start in June |
Sept - Nov |
After the commissioning phase all instruments will have friendly user experiments, before they will be officially scheduled.
Proposals
Given the delays in commissioning the reactor, cold source and instruments, we now anticipate a rolling proposal round to accommodate the differences in the commissioning phase of the instruments. Our general philosophy is that for each instrument, a measurement must have been made in the main detector from neutrons scattered by a sample at the normal sample position (as is now the case for Echidna) before we will announce a call for proposals on that instrument. Therefore, we plan as follows:
March: Open call for proposals for at least 2 instruments (from Echidna, Koala, and Wombat).
Mid-April: Deadline for proposals.
31 May: Meeting of the Programme Advisory Committee (PAC).
July/Aug.: Scheduling of first beam-time allocation.
Please note that this schedule may yet change again, depending on how the reactor and instrument commissioning progresses.
Festivities surrounding the reactors
The official opening of the new neutron-beam facility will be on 18 April 2007, followed by a science/business launch the next day.
The 30th of January 2007 marks the official shutdown of HIFAR; a documentary on HIFAR will be launched on 4 April 2007 at the Powerhouse Museum.