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Late Breaking News

                February 21, 2012
         APT Connection Issues

Some people are having trouble adding Co-Is and submitting after changing the network they are connected to. If this happens to you please try restarting APT and try to submit again. If it still doesn't work there may be a firewall or closed ports. To work around this, please go to the "Edit" menu (or "APT" menu on Mac), click on "Preferences", select the "Network" tab and click on "Force HTTP".

February 17, 2012
Updated Templates to clarify Past HST Usage and AR Management Plan Confusion

The phase I templates were updated to clarify the Past HST Usage section which should be:

List here the program numbers and data status for all accepted GO/AR/SNAP programs of the PI in at least the last four HST Cycles. Include a list of refereed publications resulting from these programs.

Please ignore section 7.1.3 of the Call for Proposals referencing Current Commitments. That was supposed to have been removed along with the text from Section 9.8 Past HST Usage.

The AR template was updated to fix the confusion over Management Plan and old Budget narrative for section 9.7.

February 03, 2012
New ETC Release: Changes in the FUV sensitivity and new throughput curves

A new version of the ETC (20.1.1) was released on January 26, 2012. This version contains COS-only related updates and affects proposers using COS for Cycle 20 proposals:

  • Throughputs of all FUV gratings have been updated to take into account that the sensitivity of the FUV channel is currently decreasing at substantially higher rates than before. The new throughputs are projected to January 1, 2013.
  • These new projections may increase the required time to reach a certain S/N by as much as 50%. Users are strongly recommended to repeat any calculations performed in preparation for the Cycle 20 call for proposals with the new version of the ETC.
  • The throughput of the G285M/NUV grating was also updated at this time. While there has been no change in the slope of the sensitivity decline, which is ~11% per year, this throughput had not been updated in the last two years, leading to exposure times that would be underestimated by ~25% by the middle of Cycle 20. Users proposing for Cycle 20 with the G285M grating should also update their calculations by using the new version of the ETC.
  • A software bug in the ETC algorithm that simulates dispersed light target acquisitions (for both FUV and NUV) resulted in overestimated exposure times for a certain S/N, by as much as a factor of 2. Users proposing for Cycle 20 are strongly encouraged to redo their calculations with the new version of the ETC.

January 13, 2012
Changes in Predicted COS FUV Channel Throughputs for Cycle 20

Monitoring of the COS FUV channel has shown that during the last few months its sensitivity has begun to decline significantly more rapidly than previously. It is now declining at rates comparable to those seen in late 2009 and early 2010 as documented in COS ISR 2011-02

This may be related to the increased atmospheric density at HST's orbital altitude as the solar cycle approaches maximum. This increases the amount of highly reactive atomic oxygen that can reach the CsI photocathode of the windowless COS detector.

While throughputs at the present time are still close to ETC estimates, if the currently observed rate of decline continues over the next year, at some wavelengths it could have a significant impact on the exposure times needed for Cycle 20 proposals. An update of the ETC with an improved estimate of COS throughputs for mid-Cycle 20 will be released by the end of January. An announcement will be sent out once the ETC has been updated.

Scientists writing HST proposals should note that even with this projected decline in sensitivity, the COS FUV channel will still be significantly more sensitive than are comparable STIS modes. This, combined with the very low detector background rate of the COS FUV channel, means that during Cycle 20 COS will remain the spectrograph of choice for most faint FUV targets.

January 11, 2012
APT 20.0 has been released for HST Phase I Submissions for Cycle 20

The Space Telescope Science Institute is pleased to announce the release of APT 20.0 and its associated documentation. This is the version of APT that needs to be used to support HST Cycle 20 Phase I submissions.

APT can be downloaded from our APT website at: http://www.stsci.edu/hst/proposing/apt.

December 29, 2011
Joint XMM-HST Programs from XMM OTAC

For XMM-Newton's Cycle 11 and HST's Cycle 20, the XMM-Newton Observing Time Allocation Committee (OTAC) met in the fall of 2011 and reviewed their proposals. The following six joint XMM-Newton proposals (listed below) have been approved for execution in HST Cycle 20. These observations will be processed during the normal HST cycle ingest after the HST Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC) meets in May of 2012 with results released to the community by mid-June.

Since these programs haven't been loaded into our Duplication checking system you will need to review the results page to check for duplications for the HST Cycle 20 Phase I Proposals.

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Up to 10% of the available HST observing time may be reserved for Director's Discretionary (DD) allocation.

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