Regular Call for Semester 16A

Semester Information

Semester start of observing 2016-02-02 00:00 UT
Semester end of observing 2016-08-02 00:00 UT

The East Asian Observatory invites observing proposals with Principal Investigators (PIs) from its partner regions (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) or from eligible PIs in the UK and Canada. There have been changes regarding Canadian PIs: please check the eligibility requirements to see if you are eligible to submit as PI. Large Surveys will absorb about half the available observing time in 16A, so PI requests are limited to a maximum of 200 hours; each 16A PI proposal should aim to be completed during the semester.

For Semester 16A, we are using a new proposal submission tool, Hedwig, and would appreciate your feedback on its suitability. We will send you a link to a survey when you submit your proposal. You can also use the “Contact us” link at the bottom of any page.

Available Instruments

Important Notes

Content of Proposal

Proposal authors are expected to provide separately both a Scientific and a Technical Justification for their proposed observations. These justifications should be substantiated with results from our integration time calculators to show that the proposed observations will reach the necessary noise limits for your science goals. The calculators are integrated into our proposal submission system, and you should use them to save your calculation(s) to your proposal.

Calibrations

Overheads for pointing, focusing, and calibrations should not be added to the time request. These activities will be accounted for separately. Calibration observations (e.g. focus, pointing, flux calibrators) and other unavoidable overheads (e.g. receiver tuning) are not charged to science projects and instead are charged to an observatory accounting code. There is therefore no need for applicants to provide calibration overhead estimates in their proposals. The observatory will perform regular and appropriate calibration observations to ensure that all science data obtained are sensibly calibrated.

  • Spectroscopically, this involves observations of one of our spectral line standards at one of about ten different line frequencies. If your observing frequency is one of these, then you’re decidedly in luck. In any case, the calibration allows you to assess the performance of the instrument. We will perform such an observation at least once per program unless a previous calibration is still appropriate, and more often if circumstances change or if more than a couple of hours pass.
  • For continuum work, calibrators will be observed at both operational wavelengths of SCUBA-2 (450µm, 850µm) at appropriate times and airmass to meet the general needs of the science program.

If a proposal demands more unusual or more frequent calibrations then this needs to be clearly stated in the proposal and the time for these calibrations requested explicitly. If you have queries about what our default calibrations might be or what extra overheads are generated by your calibration requirements please get in touch with us.

Previous Proposals

The proposers should provide information on any previous, successful JCMT allocations, including any papers published as a result or the status of the project. The success of previous projects can be taken into account when awarding time, so it is in your interests to provide full information on this. A section is included within the proposal submission system for this information.

Data Available from the Archive

We expect all proposers to check that there are not already existing public data that meet your science needs before you submit your proposal. To help you with this, we have built in a clash tool which you can use to search for potential “clashes” between your proposed objects and available data sets. It also provides a link to an archive search for each target position. It is your responsibility to ensure you comment sufficiently on why any matching data does not meet your needs. This could be because it does not reach sufficient depth, it is not at the right frequency, the observations were not of sufficient quality, or because of an error in the clash tool.

Flexible Scheduling

The overall philosophy of observing at JCMT is to match observing programs to the weather — see the Flexible Observing Guidelines for more information. A summary was also given at the January Workshops.

Please use the “Members” section of the proposal form to express your willingness and ability to travel and observe. Observers are needed to staff the observatory each night, are invited on the basis of their project demands and TAC ranking, and will receive additional priority when in attendance. However, the JCMT operates flexible observing, matching projects observed to the weather pertaining at any time; thereby, data can be acquired for a project at any time, even without the applicants being in attendance at the telescope.

Further Questions