and
A percentage of night observing time is set aside in each semester's schedule for engineering use. The engineering time is used for development projects and testing of the Keck telescope and instrument systems. The time is reserved for tests that require the night sky and/or stellar point sources. Since the demand for Keck time for both science and engineering observations is ever increasing , a process has been developed to help facilitate the planning, executing, analyzing data, and reporting the engineering experiments. The process of reviewing time requests, scheduling, and posting the results is facilitated by the engineering time allocation committee, E-TAC. This is based on the example of how science observing time is parsed out by the TACs of the various institutions. The Keck E-TAC has the following purpose:
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