Purpose
A two-part workshop focusing on the first observations to be made with
the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) will take place in Green Bank from July
27 through 29, 1998. The purpose of this workshop is to maximize the
initial scientific productivity of the GBT. The NRAO technical staff
will guide tours of the GBT and its control room, and they will give
status reports on the antenna, receivers, backends, laser metrology,
software, and operations. Then astronomers will present short contributed
papers describing their scientific goals, requirements for the GBT, and
any special NRAO support which they might need. Direct interaction
between the astronomers and technical staff will help the astronomers
plan realistic observations and help the NRAO set priorities and
performance standards for the GBT. In addition, observers with common
interests are encouraged to plan collaborations or large-scale
observing programs best undertaken jointly (e.g., an HI survey
covering a well-defined sample of nearby galaxies with uniform
resolution and sensitivity). On the evening of the second day, groups
of astronomers with similar scientific goals or observing methods
(e.g., pulsars, extragalactic HI, polarimetry, molecular spectroscopy,
high-redshift galaxies and cosmology, VLBI, continuum imaging, 3 mm
observing) will meet and draft summaries describing their fields and
how the GBT might best support them. These reports will be presented
on the morning of the third day. The remainder of the meeting will
cover commissioning of the GBT --- collimating, pointing, and
calibrating the telescope, improving its performance at short
wavelengths, and making it a productive user instrument as efficiently
as possible.