This page attempts to bring together information that might affect decisions on observing strategy for NIFS IFU observations. It is not meant to be definitive or complete, and we will continue to add information as we gain more experience with NIFS.

Planning your observing sequences:

1. Create acquisition sequences for all your targets
2. Choose appropriate stars for guiding with or without Adaptive Optics. See the Guiding Options pages for more details.
3. Devise an offset sequence for good background subtraction.
4. Choose an appropriate readmode and integration time that minimizes your observing overheads and read noise.
   1. The minimum possible exposure time is 5 seconds.
   2. The maximum recommended integration time is ~1200 seconds to adequately remove cosmic rays and subtract sky.
5. Construct your observing sequence and verify that it does what you want it to.
   
   1. Don't forget to include an arc observation for wavelength calibration.