Observer Support FAQs

Observations will be carried out by an LMT operator, supervised by a support scientist. In the future, we hope to provide a remote-monitoring capability to allow LMT users to watch observations being collected. See the Observing Procedures webpage for more information.

Changes to approved science programs must be reviewed by the LMT management team before they can be implemented. Contact the LMT Helpdesk to request changes to your science program.

Yes; we have already conducted some VLBI experiments in the past. These projects can be difficult to support, but can be arranged if the scientific priority is high enough and the project is relatively straightforward to accomplish. 

All the new ETCs now includes overheads, so you do not need to add any extra time.

Yes, hence for a 1 Jy km/s line with a Δv = 200 km/s the expected "peak" flux is 5 mJy. If you desire to get a SNR = 5, then the input to the ETC should be 1 mJy i.e. (1 Jy km/s)/(200 km/s)/5 = 1mJy. This statement holds for any of the heterodyne receivers, there is no need to divide by the number of channels. The table below shows some examples of the expected integration times for RSR, SEQUOIA, MSIP1mm and B4R with an input RMS of 1 mJy.

*Notice that it is possible to rebin the spectrum to obtain a reasonable integration time. As an example: let's observe with SEQUOIA in the W mode. If you can afford to average 85 channels to an effective velocity resolution of 99 km/s, you can tolerate sqrt(85) times higher noise in each channel.  Hence, enter an input RMS of 1 mJy * sqrt(85) = 9.2 mJy, and the desired integration time becomes ~200 minutes.