1.2 New and Important Features of Cycle 20

•	Cycle 19 observations will end on September 30, 2012, and Cycle 20 will extend from October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2013.

•	We will accept proposals for the following instruments in Cycle 20: two cameras on ACS: ACS/WFC and ACS/SBC, COS, FGS, STIS, and WFC3. NICMOS is no longer offered.

Proposers to Cycle 20 should be aware that the instrument complement offered is subject to change. Please consult the Cycle 20 Announcement Web Page for up to date information on the status of HST instrumentation.

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As a result of a large backlog of approved orbits clustered in certain parts of the sky, right ascension (RA) restrictions will be imposed for GO observations in this cycle. Users are restricted to a maximum of 30 orbits per proposal within each of the following RA intervals: 165<RA<205 degrees (11h00m<RA<13h40m), and 350<RA<75 degrees (23h20m<RA<5h00m). Furthermore, any observations within these RA ranges must have increased scheduling flexibility. SNAP programs are not subject to the RA restrictions, but moving-target and Large Program observations are impacted. The RA restrictions and scheduling requirements are discussed in Section 4.1.8. These restrictions will only apply to Cycle 20.

•	Also due to the heavy scheduling in Cycle 20, Large GO Programs requesting 100 orbits or more in Cycle 20 must use the shorter target visibility values from Table 6.1 of the HST Primer, which will be enforced for any of these programs approved for Phase II.

•	Joint HST-Spitzer proposals are no longer offered.

•	Joint HST/XMM-Newton proposals are now possible (see Section 3.6).

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Following the recommendations of the Space Telescope Users Committee, data taken for all Large and Treasury Programs will have no proprietary period as a default. Proposers may request a proprietary period, and that request should be justified in the "Special Requirements" section of the proposal (see Section 9.3). Such a request will be subject to review by the TAC.

•	Following the recommendations of the Space Telescope Users Committee, proposers may now apply for Long-Term status (up to two cycles) for Target-of-Opportunity (ToO) programs that target objects with an extremely low probability of occurrence during one cycle (see Section 4.1.2).

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During Cycle 19, HST resurrected the capability of performing a single, linear spatial scan of the telescope relative to the target, to enable observations of very bright targets and higher S/N on other targets. This observing mode is now formally offered in Cycle 20 for WFC3 only. See Section 5.5 of the HST Primer for more information on this capability.

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The procedures for verifying APT submissions have been updated. A message verifying a successful submission will appear in the Submission Log on the Submission Screen in APT within about a minute of submission. The PI and all CoIs will receive an automatic e-mail acknowledgement that the merged PDF submission was received successfully. After the Phase I deadline has passed, and all submissions are in their final form, you will receive final notification that your submission has been successfully processed; this e-mail will mark the completion of your submission. If you do not receive the final notification e-mail within 48 hours of the deadline, please contact the STScI Help Desk and provide the submission ID from the APT Submission Log window. If there are any problems associated with your PDF attachment, you will be contacted by e-mail.

•	Users submitting Calibration Proposals must contact the appropriate instrument group to discuss their program prior to submission (see Section 3.2.3).

The following features also deserve special mention, but have not changed since the last cycle:

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Proposers submitting Theory or Regular Archive (AR) or Legacy proposals (Section 3.4) are no longer required to provide a numerical estimate of the required budget. For planning purposes only, the proposals should be identified as SMALL if the expected budget is less than $60,000; MEDIUM if the expected budget is between $60,000 and $120,000; and Legacy if the expected budget exceeds $120,000. As in past cycles, Legacy programs will be assessed by the TAC. The final budget for accepted programs will be assessed by the Financial Review Committee.

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Target of Opportunity programs are divided into two categories: disruptive ToOs, which are rapid-response observations that require revision of an existing HST observing schedule, and non-disruptive ToOs, which can be accommodated within the standard scheduling process. Disruptive ToOs typically require observations within 2-3 weeks of activation. Implementation of disruptive ToOs demands significant resources, and their number is limited to 8 in Cycle 20. Proposers should refer to Section 4.1.2 for more information on the ToO policy and to the ToO webpage for specific examples.

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Investigator address information is necessary for completing an APT Phase I proposal. A web-based application, ProPer, is available for updating address information and for requesting a new user to be added to the STScI address database. Access to the application is available at http://gms.stsci.edu/proper/profile. The ProPer Application has replaced use of the addr-chg@stsci.edu email address for submitting investigator address changes.

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STScI experience has shown that some programs can introduce substantial difficulties in developing an effective and efficient long-range observing schedule. Proposers submitting Large and Treasury Programs are asked to include additional technical details (e.g., orient constraints, tiling strategy for large mosaic programs and time constraints) in the “Description of the Observations” section (see Section 9.2) to provide information on the scheduling aspects of their program.

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The HST pointing control system and the HST scheduling systems were not designed to support observations of objects as close as the Moon. Nonetheless, observations are possible under gyro control in three-gyro mode. Planning and scheduling such observations place strong demands on the available resources. Consequently, while GO proposals to observe the Moon can be submitted for consideration by the Cycle 20 TAC, these proposals must use observing strategies that have been used in previous HST lunar observing programs (see the Lunar Observations User Information Report).

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In addition to the proposal categories that have existed for many cycles, STScI continues to solicit proposals in the categories of ‘Treasury Proposals’ (see Section 3.2.5), ‘Theory Proposals’ (see Section 3.4.4) and ‘Legacy AR Proposals’ (see Section 3.4.2). It is also possible to request observing time on Chandra (see Section 3.5), XMM-Newton (see Section 3.6), and NOAO telescopes (see Section 3.7) in combination with requests for HST observations.