Observing time for the telescopes of the “Observatorios de Canarias” (OOCC): GTC, WHT, INT, TNG, NOT, Mercator, and Liverpool on La Palma Island and Stella on Tenerife, is offered and allocated twice a year in periods of 6 months. Calls for proposals are usually opened at March and September every year. Meetings of the committee usually take place at May and November. Proposals must be submitted using the night time CAT application tool (see how to submit proposals).
Regular and Large Proposals for all telescopes are accepted at these ordinary calls. Details and limitations for each specific semesters are detailed in the corresponding Call for Proposals. Regular proposals are those whose executation is limited to one semester.
Large programs are defined as projects with the potential to lead to a major advance in a specific field of astrophysics. They may extend to more than one semester, with a maximum of four semesters. Up to 66% of the time distributed by the CAT on the Liverpool, Mercator, STELLA, and INT, up to 33% of the time on NOT and TNG, and up to 15% of the time on the WHT may be assigned to Large Programs. See the call for proposals of a specific semester for possible limitations in the time available for Large proposals caused by previously accepted, ongoing projects. In addition to a strong scientific justification, proposers should demonstrate to have the necessary manpower and tools for a quick and comprehensive analysis of the data and publication of the results.
- Large programs on the GTC. These projects should require a minimum of 100 hours that can be distributed over up to four semesters, with a limitation of 100 h per semester. These 100 hours follow the standard division into dark, grey and bright time (50-30-20). This limits the maximum allocation to GTC Large programs per semester to 50 hours in dark time, 80 hours in dark/grey conditions, and 100 hours without any moon restriction. Given these limits, a GTC Large program can request up to a total of 200 hours of dark time distributed over 4 semesters, 320 hours in grey time, and 400 hours with no moon restrictions. Execution of a GTC-LP will be preferentially done in service/queue mode. Requests to conduct it (partially or completely) in visitor mode will be considered if it significantly improves the efficiency of the proposed observations. Note, however, that payback for bad weather or technical failure in visitor mode will no be offered. As the observing time is deduced from the CAT share, only GTC Large Program applications with PIs and a large part of team from Spanish institutions will be accepted.
- A report on the progress of Large Programs should be submitted to the CAT yearly (all telescopes except for GTC) and every semester for the GTC.
- Proprietary period for Large Programs will be that of the applied telescopes, except for GTC, whose raw data will be public one year after the completion of the GTC Large program. The PI of a GTC Large project will also be asked to put the reduced data into the GTC archive.
Both regular and large proposals should be submitted using the application tool http://cat.iac.es. See how to submit for more information.