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Call 2022A

Call for Proposals to be supported via the Opticon Radionet Pilot  (ORP) Trans-National Access programme (Grant Reference Number 101004719) in semester 2022A.

The call for observing time at OPTICAL telescopes supported by the ORP Trans-National Access programme will close on 31 August 2021 at 23.59UT exactly. Radio telescopes in the ORP are not included in this call. Please review this note carefully, even if you have used the TNA programme before.

The semester is centred on February 2022 to August 2022, but there are small variations at some telescopes to accommodate their normal semesters and maximise scheduling flexibility.

In view of the COVID-19 crisis, some observatories may be forced to close temporarily, or may not be able to host visiting observers. Runs so affected will not automatically be rescheduled, this will depend on local observatory policies.

Note that technical support for the submission software is not provided out-of-hours or on weekends and late applications will not be accepted, so please complete your application in plenty of time.

Proposals must meet certain rules for formal eligibility concerning team membership. Please pay attention to those rules or your proposal may be rejected without any scientific evaluation. Note that 'The user group leader and the majority of the users must work in a country other than the country(ies) where the installation is located'. Since many national astronomical facilities are located in remote sites we add the restriction that 'The group leader and the majority of the users must work at institutions which are outside the country/ies which operate the telescope'. The interpretation of 'majority' is 50% + 1 user, and the user group leader is a member of the user group. In the case of applicants with significant national infrastructures the proposal must contain an explanation of why the project cannot be executed with comparable national facilities. Please also note there is a prohibition on projects which could be applied for by the PI using national mechanisms open to them to access non-national telescopes. Examples of such mechanisms are guaranteed time due to international agreements or provision of instrumentation and bilateral national time exchanges between specific communities. Submission of similar proposals to national calls for the same instrument/project are strongly discouraged. The ORP process asks for technical support from each observatory and duplicated programmes will be severely disadvantaged. In such cases, please outline clearly why the proposals are different. Note that projects led by, or dominated by, non-EU persons are limited to 20% of the total allocations. In practice this means only a small number of such projects can be allocated and so such proposals must be exceptionally well justified. If in doubt, contact the ORP representative (details below) 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.

Please note that we adopt the following definitions and you should consider which facilities offer these options when defining your project:

Semester: This is the range of dates over which observations may be requested. It is not the same for each observatory.

Queue Scheduled: Weather and time dependent flexible scheduling to meet observing criteria specified by the user and scientific priority set by the observatory. Usually carried out by staff astronomers. Will not be attempted if specified conditions cannot be met and will not be carried over into future semesters.

Time Critical Observations: Predictable events which require special schedule constraints (eg. Planet transits, asteroid occultations, simultaneous observations with spacecraft)

Overrides: Observations which cannot be scheduled in advance but must be triggered by the PI of the proposal to take precedence over scheduled observing due to nature of a statistically likely but unpredictable event (eg. GRB, Supernova, Comet Outburst). Individual observatory policies may limit the number and frequencies of such triggers. Please check the observatory webpages for details noting that sometimes this mode is referred to by individual observatories as a Target of Opportunity (ToO).

Targets of Opportunity: Completely unexpected and unpredictable events of very high interest resulting from a specific discovery (eg A whole new class of object discovered in a survey, a radio signal or biomarker from an extrasolar planet, discovery of an object predicted to impact Earth). Almost by definition observing time for such projects cannot be scheduled in advance and would normally be allocated via a direct request from the PI to each observatory for director’s discretionary time. Such eventualities are almost impossible to accommodate within the ORP scheduling process. If you plan to request time for such a project, as distinct from the reasonably predictable overrides as defined above, please contact the TNA organiser (details below) first to discuss options and possible triggering scenarios on a case by case basis. For the moment, follow up of gravitational wave events are considered to be in this category as recent examples have been well covered via DDT and pre-existing national ToO/Time Domain Astronomy programmes.

Monitoring: Observations which require a regular cadence (eg SN decay, giant planet weather, comet activity variation with heliocentric distance) but which are not highly date/time specific. May be executed in ‘service mode’ to minimise PI travel.

Service Mode: Observations which are carried out by a local astronomer as part of a classically scheduled operations without flexibility for specific observing constraints. Also known as ‘Delegated visitor mode’. The PI is not expected to provide an observer.

Robotic: Automated telescope or network of telescopes using software to schedule and execute observations according to observatory schedule, weather and priority algorithms without direct human intervention on a nightly basis. Essentially automated queue scheduling without real-time human discretion.

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.

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 projects does 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 ORP 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 international time allocation committee. The ORP team 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.

ORP facility users must ensure that all efforts are made to publish any resulting scientific publications, including data, in accordance with H2020 Open Access Guidelines as stipulated in the Grant Agreement.

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 for clearly demonstrated scientific reasons it will be necessary to get confirmation from the Project Scientist (details below). Please also see the section on Trans-National Access on our Rules for Travel page.

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. 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 EU 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 ORP pool. Proposals made to and approved via non-ORP mechanisms will not qualify for travel grant support. Note that the results of the ORP TAC review will be communicated to the national TACs to avoid undesirable duplication.

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.

For general questions about the call, registering with NORTHSTAR and policies, rules and procedures look in our FAQ page and if this does not help you then contact the Project Scientist (details below).

For specific practical information about telescopes/instruments, please contact the local observatory team directly.

Good luck

John Davies

john.davies@stfc.ac.uk

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004719