HST will be offering two new types of GO program in Cycle 16: Coordinated HST-Spitzer Programs and Survey Programs. In addition, the guidelines governing Snapshot proposals have been revised.

Coordinated HST-Spitzer Proposals

Users of both HST and Spitzer have had the opportunity to propose Joint HST-Spitzer observing programs in each of the last three cycles (Cycles 13, 14 and 15). Those proposals, however, are limited to less than 50 hours Spitzer time per proposal, and less than 125 hours in total, for submissions to HST, and less than 90 orbits of HST time, for submissions to Spitzer. Similar restrictions apply to Joint HST-Chandra and Spitzer-Chandra programs.

Many participants at the Great Observatories Workshop, held in Pasadena in May 2006, expressed concern that the operational restrictions of the joint programs hinders exploitation of the full scientific potential of research programs utilising two or more Great Observatories. Those concerns are heightened by the continued depletion of Spitzer's cryogens, which will limit observations at wavelengths longer than 5 um to Cycles 4 and 5.

In order to address these concerns, HST and Spitzer and offering the community the opportunity to apply for a new category of Joint HST-Spitzer program. Coordinated HST-Spitzer programs will allow users to apply for large-scale programs that require at least 50 hours of Spitzer time and at least 70 orbits of HST time. These proposals are equivalent the Large GO proposals allocated by HST and the Large programs allocated by Spitzer, and have the appropriate format and page limits.

Scientists interested in submitting a Coordinated HST-Spitzer proposal must submit a non-binding Notice of Intent (NOI) by 1 December 2006. The NOI should include the name of the PI, the names of known co-Is, the title of the proposal, a short (<200 word) abstract and an estimate of the resources requested on HST and Spitzer. NOIs should be submitted by e-mail to I. N. Reid (inr@stsci.edu) and L. Storrie-Lombardi (lisa@ipac.caltech.edu)

Coordinated HST-Spitzer proposals should be submitted to through the standard channels to both HST and Spitzer. The proposal deadline is 26 January 2006, the HST deadline. The proposals will be assessed by a Joint HST-Spitzer TAC, which will include TAC members from both the STScI and Spitzer TACs. The NOIs will be used to identify appropriate panel members. The Joint TAC will meet in mid-March 2007, approximately one week before the HST TAC, and will have the option of allocating the submitted programs up to 300 orbits of HST time and 500 hours of Spitzer time.

GO Survey Proposals Survey programs are designed to provide an opportunity for PIs to undertake statistical projects, where the science goals can be achieved through observations of a randomly selected subset of objects drawn from a larger sample. To date, this type of scientific program has been undertaken through Snapshot observations. Snapshot programs are still available (see following section), but the typical completion rate has declined since Cycle 14. Survey programs have been added as an alternative means of pursuing this type of project.

Survey programs are GO programs, and are therefore adjudicated by the HST TAC/panels in competition with standard GO programs. A successful Survey program is allocated the requested number of orbits, and has the same guarantees for completion as standard GO proposals. Survey PIs, however, can submit a superset of targets to provide maximum flexibility in scheduling their observations.

Survey proposals have a number of special restrictions that are designed to maximise scheduling opportunities (see the technical summary):

Targets should be distributed over a wide range of Right Ascension;
Observations must be completely unconstrained (no orients, timing constraints);
Observations must be limited to durations of less than 48 minutes per orbit, including target acquisition and other overheads;
If a Survey program requires observations of N targets, PIs must submit a list of M targets, where 1.5N < M < 3N.
PIs may not assign priorities to individual targets.

Survey proposals can also take advantage of the following options:

Multi-orbit visits are permitted;
Individual visits can be tailored (duration, filter choice) to specific targets.
Moving target observations are permitted, provided that the observing windows for each target are at least one month.

Full details on the characteristics of Survey programs are given in Section 3.2.3 of the Call for Proposals for Cycle 16.

A technical User Information Report (UIR) which discusses Survey Proposal scheduling characteristics is forthcoming. Please check back in this article [or the Cycle 16 Announcement page] for a link to this UIR soon.

As discussed in the technical summary, we expect that Survey programs will lead to a significant increase in scheduling efficiency. Consequently, we are offering an incentive to proposers. Each panel in the Time Allocation Committee has a specific allotment of orbits to assign to proposals. To encourage consideration of medium-size proposals, we subsidize the allocations: thus, a 50-orbit program only uses 36 orbits from the panel allocation, with the remaining 14 orbits drawn from a central pool. Survey proposals will receive an additional subsidy of 15-20%.

Snapshot Proposals
As described in the SNAP User Information Report ( All About Snaps, see http://www.stsci.edu/hst/HST_overview/documents/uir/UIR_SNAP.pdf ), the initial HST observing schedule is constructed from GO programs; appropriate Snapshot observations are used to fill holes in that schedule. Snapshot program completion rates of 30 to 70% were typical until recently; however, those completion rates declined to 10-40% in Cycle 14, partly due to increased scheduling efficiency and partly due to the reduced sky coverage provided in two-gyro mode. The completion rates have increased to some extent in Cycle 15, but still remain lower than previous cycles. It is for that reason that we have introduced Survey Programs.

Survey programs are restricted to durations less than 48 minutes per orbit. In order to further distinguish Snapshot Programs from Survey Programs, we are restricting individual Snapshots to durations less than 40 minutes (including target acquisition). This will provide more scope for allocating Survey programs, and will also allow us to assign more orbits to GO programs (with a corresponding decrease in the number of Snapshots allocated).

Shortcuts

Cycle 17 Call for Proposals

Multi-Cycle Treasury Programs Call for Proposals

HST Primer

Phase II Instructions

APT

COS GTO

WFC3 ERS

STScI Community Service Programs

HST Documents

Science Justification Templates


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