Call for proposals – semester 2018B

• We recall that every proposal within the Spanish CAT scheme must be led by a principal  investigator (PI) affiliated to a Spanish Institution. 

• The start and end of the semester change with telescope as illustrated next:
  • WHT, INT, Stella:   August – January.
  • NOT, TNG, Mercator:   October – March. 
  • GTC:   September – February. 
  • Liverpool (LT):   July – February (a two-month overlap period is adopted at the start and end of each semester, when proposals from both semesters may be observed in order to reduce problems with under-filled observations queues).

• Large programs requesting observing time with TNG, NOT, STELLA, LT, Mercator, and/or INT are accepted.  See below.

• Proposals in visitor mode (including those of GTC) should include a proper backup scientific program that does not require good weather conditions. The backup program are evaluated by the CAT.

• Proposals are evaluated at the next meeting of the CAT and recommendations are made to the Direction of the various Observatories/Telescopes. 

Please, read carefully the following information and recommendations made for each telescope and for large programs. There are changes with respect to previous calls for proposals. Pay special attention to the new (latex, word, pages) form for the preparation of proposals.

To submit proposals, see “how to submit” at the end of this document.

GTC

Detailed information about the feature of GTC for this semester can be found on the GTC call for proposals. A short summary is provided next:

• In semester 2018B, no Large Programs are offered.
• OSIRIS, EMIR, MEGARA, and HiPERCAM are offered in this call. CanariCam and CIRCE are no longer offered. 
• MEGARA is the new optical spectrograph of GTC that has both IFU and MOS intermediate-to-high spectral resolution capabilities. MEGARA is offered starting from July 1st, 2018. Applicants may take advantage of this broader window of observations only for MEGARA proposals.
• EMIR broad- and narrow-band imaging and long-slit spectroscopy are offered. All applicants are recommended to use this tool (which does not include overheads) to optimize the observing time of EMIR targets. 
• OSIRIS “imaging” (broad-band, SHARDS filters, tunable filters),  “spectroscopy” (long-slit, MOS), and “frame transfer and fast photometry” are offered. Multi-Object Spectroscopy (MOS) observations will be part of the observing queue only if the proposals are ranked in the top half (first and second quartiles) of the Spanish CAT final list. However, any proposal in the third and fourth quartiles that has the MOS masks already fabricated from previous semesters will be also included in the observing queue. Applicants must indicate whether their MOS masks are to be fabricated or are available from previous semesters. For overheads related to the various observing modes, see the GTC document.
• HiPERCAM is a high-speed, multi-band imager and a new GTC visitor instrument (Principal Investigator Vik Dhillon). It is offered on a shared-risk basis to the community quite likely by the beginning of the semester: September – October 2018.
• For the calculation of overheads, the GTC Observatory strongly recommends the use of the following Phase 2 simulator.
• Visitor programs are welcome, but will only be admitted whenever they fall in the top half of the ranked proposal list. The applicants must clearly indicate they are applying for visitor mode. A backup program (in visitor mode) should be defined in the case the observing conditions for the main program are not met.
• Target-of-opportunity proposals are accepted (see here for further details). Target-of-opportunity proposals will be recommended whenever they fall in the top half of the ranked proposal list.
• Approved CAT proposals ranked in the first quartile, will be granted an extended life-time of three semesters, or until their completion, whichever comes first. Note that all phase II information must be submitted to the GTC at the deadline corresponding to the semester in which the proposal is accepted.

PROTECTED OBJECTS. Due to the execution of Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) of various instrumental teams, all applicants are kindly requested to check the list of protected objects here (follow the links to the corresponding instrument). Protected objects cannot be proposed for observation by other users, unless an instrumental setup different to that of the GTO is required.

FILLER PROPOSALS: In order to have an efficient queue-scheduled observations scheme for the GTC, it is useful to have a set of “filler” programs that can be executed under adverse observing conditions (bad seeing, poor sky transmission, etc.) and with targets spanning a wide range in right ascension (RA). Proposers may request filler status for their program, and during the proposal selection process CAT will evaluate their suitability for this category. Such proposals can request a large number of observing hours. In order to be considered as filler proposals they must fulfil the following requirements:

• Their observing requirements should be very relaxed, i.e. little or no restrictions on seeing or cloud coverage. 
• The chosen observing mode should be a frequently used mode (MOS observations are not accepted for filler programs).
• There is a scientific gain even if only a small fraction of the requested observations are executed.
• A list of targets with a broad RA coverage is provided or,  if only few targets are included, they must have good visibility during the semester.

Note that filler proposals have generally been highly successful in the last semesters.