Tangential to specific plans for cadence white papers (though perhaps
something that could be included) is that I would be interested in
seeing a rolling cadence version of opSim that “candy stripes” the
different observing bands (i.e., along a diagonal rather than in Dec
or RA bands).
The concern is that using Dec bands will result in bands with
asymmetric airmass minima, which could lead to undesirable features
like a difference in depth between the Dec bands (e.g., see
mothra_2045). RA bands could have similar potential problems related
to (seasonal) weather and length of night.
So, I wanted to suggest trying diagonal bands (with slope of roughly
the sidereal rate). Maybe when the “feature-based” scheduler is in
place?
Gordon