Feb. 12, 2016

The call for observing time at night time telescopes supported by the OPTICON Trans-National Access programme will close on 2 March at 23.59 UT. The semester is centred on October 2016 to March 2017, but there are small variations at some telescopes to accommodate their normal semesters and maximise scheduling flexibility. Note that the present OPTICON contract finishes on 31 December 2016. Runs which cannot be scheduled before that date will not be supported unless the OPTICON consortium is awarded a new grant under Horizon 2020. A new grant proposal will be submitted in March 2016, but the outcome of this will not be known until the late summer. Therefore any projects which require time after 31 December are subject to the additional constraint of requiring a sucessful OPTICON Horizon 2020 proposal. Horizon 2020 is of course a competitive process and no such award is guaranteed. 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. The PI and at least half of the Co-Iʼs must be working at institutions from EU member states or EU associated countries but which are outside the country/ies which own the telescope. Specifically the applicable rules are in Annex III to the grant agreement, and the relevant clause is that the user group leader and the majority of the users must work in a institution established in a Member State or Associated State; the interpretation of 'majority' is 50% + 1 user, and the user group leader is of course a member of the user group.

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.