Rapid Turnaround Call for Semester 20B

This is a call for rapid turnaround proposals. For regular calls for proposals, please see the facility home page.

Semester Information

Semester start of observing 2020-08-02 00:00 UT
Semester end of observing 2021-02-02 00:00 UT

The East Asian Observatory invites JCMT observing proposals requesting Rapid Turnaround (RT) time with Principal Investigators (PIs) from its partner regions (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan), from its affiliate member regions (Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand), or from eligible PIs in the UK/Ireland. All prospective PIs should review the JCMT eligibility requirements page prior to the preparation and submission of a proposal.

A new RT submission cycle shall begin at the start of every month and close at the intermediate deadline at the end of the month. Any proposals not submitted at this time will remain in preparation and can be submitted during a subsequent cycle for the same semester. RT requests are limited to a maximum of 8 hours for Band 1 – 4 time requests, but are unlimited for Band 5 time requests. The Observatory shall aim to complete successful RT proposals within six months of their formal approval, after which time they shall be removed from the observing queue (regardless of their levels of completion).

All RT proposals submitted shall be peer-reviewed by the proposal creator (or designated co-author) of other proposals also submitted during the same submission cycle.

The proposal peer review deadlines shall normally be two weeks after the close of the monthly RT proposal submission deadlines.

By submitting a proposal, all proposing teams are committing themselves to providing ratings and brief written assessments of several other proposals submitted for this Call by the corresponding deadline.

Any proposing team that fails to provide a full set of reviews for their assigned proposals by the corresponding review deadline shall have their own proposal removed from the review process. All such proposals shall be regarded as abandoned by the Observatory.

The MSBs for all approved RT projects should be created as soon as possible after their corresponding monthly RT review period has completed, ideally before the end of the month following the RT submission deadline met by the proposal.

Example: A proposal submitted in January for the RT submission deadline at the end of January would be peer-reviewed during the first two weeks of February. Assuming the proposal were to be approved, the MSBs should then be prepared during the remaining part of February, with the aim that the project be observed during the months of March — August.

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 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.

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 (or otherwise) JCMT proposals, 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 (non-scientific) audience. 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.

In addition, programs with PIs/Co-Is new to the JCMT are strongly encouraged to visit the Observatory to learn more about the telescope, data acquisition and data reduction and provide seminars.

Further Questions

For any remaining further questions, please use the “Contact us” link at the bottom of any page of the proposal submission system.