Aug. 8,2015
The call for observing time at night time telescopes supported by the OPTICON Trans-National Access programme is now open. It will remain open until exactly 23:59 UT on Monday 31 August 2015. The semester is centred on March 2016 to September 2016, but there are small variations at some telescopes to accommodate their normal semesters and maximise scheduling flexibility. NB. Technical support for the submission software is not provided out-of-hours and late applications will not be accepted so please complete your application in plenty of time.
Proposals must meet certain EU and OPTICON rules for formal eligibility concerning team membership. Please pay attention to those rules or your proposal will be rejected without any scientific evaluation. Broadly speaking, the PI and at least half of the Co-I’s must be working at institutions from EU member states or EU associated countries but which are outside the country/ies which own the telescope. Please also note the prohibition on projects which could be applied for by the PI using the national mechanisms open to them. If in doubt, contact the Project Scientist for clarification.
The maximum number of nights available at each facility is given in the table. It may be possible to move projects between telescopes to match scientific rating and demand. If your project can be done at more than one facility indicate in the technical case any alternate choices and note any technical issues such as changes in the time request which would result.
You can see details of the types of instruments likely to be available at these and other telescopes by following this link to the Medium Telescopes Instrumentation Suite. Unless noted above, any instrument available to national users of an observatory may be requested. Please consult each observatory web-page for instrument details and policies.
Requests for multiple telescopes for the same scientific project must be included in a single proposal form. Request for projects with different scientific objectives should be made on separate proposal forms.
At present, please do not request long term status. Individual telescopes commit time to the observing pool on a semester by semester basis. We cannot assign 'long term' status as the TAC do not know for certain if sufficient nights on your telescope of choice will be available in future semesters. So please make a single semester proposal and make a note in the text that you will be re-applying in the future with a similar project.
Since the OPTICON Trans-National Access programme is limited by the EC funds available, it is possible that not all of these nights will be allocated at every facility.
Projects must be scientifically competitive and will be ranked based on scientific merit and technical feasibility by a special OPTICON international time allocation committee. OPTICON will attempt to schedule nights allocated by this committee subject to practical constraints on telescope and instrument availability. Due regard will be given to EC criteria regarding new users and users without similar national infrastructures. The oversubscription factor varies considerably between facilities and semesters but, as a guide, on average ~33% of proposals in recent rounds have been awarded time.
Successful proposers will receive travel funds as necessary for them to take up the observing time. This will normally be for a single observer. If travel support for more than one observer is required it will be necessary to get confirmation from the project office. Please also see the section on Trans-National Access on our Rules for Travel page. Attention is drawn to a new OPTICON initiative for widening experience of observing techniques, the La Caille Scheme. Successful proposers will be invited, but are not required, to assist with this scheme (La Caille webpage).
For downstream processing by the individual observatories, successful proposers may be required to complete and submit either Phase 1 (application forms) or Phase 2 (detailed observing request) forms. In this situation the science case will not be re-evaluated but the forms will be used to extract practical information required for the observatory proposal reporting and scheduling databases.
Facilities not in this list are not offering OPTICON supported observing in this semester, even though they may have done so in the past and may do in the future. Some facilities have policies which allow international users to apply via their regular national proposal process or to specific international time which is not part of the OPTICON pool. Proposals made to and approved via non-OPTICON mechanisms will not qualify for OPTICON travel grant support. Note that the results of the OPTICON TAC review will be communicated to the national TACs to avoid undesirable duplication.
In the case of linked proposals (for example using national time to prepare for or follow-up an OPTICON-supported run) or where the OPTICON time available is insufficient for the project to be accomplished, please indicate your intention to make a linked application and explain why this is necessary.
The proposal software, an OPTICON variant of the NORTHSTAR system already in use at several observatories, is available at the following url:http://proposal.astro-opticon.org. You are required to register for account (only minimal information is required) and you can then create, share and complete your proposal on-line. Note that each Northstar system is unique, you cannot use a Northstar account created for another TAC process (e.g. a RADIONET account). The form has a 'read me first' section of general information and number of built in help pages. The sample 'case for support' tex file contains a summary of what information is suggested for the scientific case. Large target lists can be uploaded as a suitably formatted file. In the case of large projects, or those with a large list of possible targets from which only a subset will be observed, upload only a sample of representative targets.