Regular Call for Semester 20A
Semester Information
| Semester start of observing | 2020-02-02 00:00 UT |
|---|---|
| Semester end of observing | 2020-08-02 00:00 UT |
The East Asian Observatory invites observing proposals of two types at this time:
1. 20A PI Proposals
The East Asian Observatory invites observing proposals with Principal Investigators (PIs) from its partner regions (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan), from Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia or Thailand, or from eligible PIs in the UK and Ireland. All prospective PIs should review the JCMT eligibility requirements page prior to the preparation and submission of a proposal.
PI requests are limited to a maximum of 200 hours; each PI proposal should aim to be completed during the semester.
- The Time Allocation Committee (TAC) for JCMT will assess each PI proposal for scientific merit and will rank and approve observing time accordingly.
- Multi-national collaborations are encouraged — time will be distributed following the rules for collaborative projects.
- Projects which request the heterodyne instruments and/or weather bands 4 and 5 are also encouraged.
- Anyone submitting a proposal to the JCMT should expect to be called upon to review one or two of the other proposals received in the same round. The continued co-operation of our user community in the review process is appreciated.
2. JCMT Large Programs III (to encompass all semesters from 20A up to and including 22B)
Applications are invited for the third Large Programs Call for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Large Programs are defined by the Observatory as projects which require significant amounts (> 200 hours) of observing time, require more than a single semester to complete and that take full advantage of the capabilities of the JCMT’s instrumentation to address multiple important scientific questions. This Call is aimed at continuing and growing the impact of the previous generations of JCMT Large Programs and Legacy Surveys.
Submissions will be accepted from scientists in any of the East Asian Observatory regions (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan), from Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia or Thailand, or from eligible PIs in the UK/Ireland. Please see the JCMT eligibility requirements page for more information. Any scientist from these regions is eligible to participate at any level (PI or co-I) in a survey proposal. Collaborations are strongly encouraged and subject to the requirements detailed below (see the “Large Program Definitions and Requirements” section of this page). Multiple regional coordinators (one per region) should be identified in the text of Large Program proposals. One of these should be designated as PI for the purposes of the proposal submission system.
Full details of this third Large Programs Call are available here:
https://www.eaobservatory.org/jcmt/proposals/large-programs-iii/
The length limits for all Large Program Science and Technical Justifications are 8 and 5 pages respectively. These must both be uploaded as PDF files.
Please note that maximum permitted size for PDF file uploads (scientific justification and technical justification) for all proposal types is 10 MB.
Available Instruments
Continuum
- SCUBA-2
- POL-2 – Applicants should consult JCMT staff for sensitivity estimates.
Heterodyne
The heterodyne backend, ACSIS, provides great flexibility in bandwidth and resolution. Various modes of observing are available for all associated heterodyne receivers.
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 by results from the JCMT integration time calculators to show that the proposed observations will reach the necessary noise limits for the proposed science goals. The calculators are integrated into the proposal submission system, and should be used to save the calculation(s) for their inclusion in the 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 the JCMT spectral line standards at one of about ten different line frequencies. If the target observing frequency is one of these, then the proposers are in luck. In any case, the calibration allows the proposers to assess the performance of the instrument. Such an observation will be performed 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 airmasses 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. For queries about what the default calibrations might be, or what extra overheads are generated by a project’s calibration requirements, please consult JCMT staff.
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 the proposers’ interests to provide full information on this. A section is included within the proposal submission system for this information.
Data Available from the Archive and Large Programs
All proposers are expected to check that there are no preexisting public data that meet the proposal’s science needs, or conflicting large programs, before submitting a proposal. A clash tool is available to aid in this, which can be used to search for potential “clashes” between the proposed objects and available data sets. It also provides a link to an archive search for each target position.
It is the proposers’ responsibility to ensure that sufficient explanation is included as to why any matching data does not meet the project’s needs — e.g. because it does not reach sufficient depth, or because is not at the right frequency, or because the observations were not of sufficient quality.
The ‘Outreach’ version of the proposed science
In the ‘Public Summary’ section, proposers should provide a paragraph describing the goals of the proposal in a way that is understandable to a general audience. A translation of the abstract might be a good starting point. This may be used in JCMT outreach efforts.
Flexible Scheduling
The overall philosophy of observing at JCMT is to match observing programs to the weather — see the Flexible Observing Guidelines page for more information. Data may then be acquired for a project at any time, even without the applicants being in attendance at the telescope. A summary was also given at the January 2015 Workshops.
Observer status
The “Members” section of the proposal form should be used to express the proposers’ willingness and ability to travel and observe.
The JCMT will primarily be run in “Remote Operations” mode for the entirety of the semester. For observing teams that have submitted projects of unusual technical complexity or projects that make use of unusual observing/calibration modes, however, the Observatory may invite visiting observers to come to the Hilo and/or summit facilities in order to directly participate in the execution of JCMT observations.
Any such observers from approved projects will normally be invited on the basis of their project demands and TAC ranking, and their projects will receive additional priority when in attendance. Identification of one or more possible observers for each proposal is therefore strongly encouraged.
Further Questions
For any remaining further questions, please use the “Contact us” link at the bottom of any page of the proposal submission system.