By agreement with the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), STScI will be able to award time on NOAO facilities to highly ranked proposals that request time on both HST and NOAO telescopes. The award of time on NOAO facilities will be subject to approval by the NOAO Director, after nominal review by the NOAO TAC to avoid duplication of programs. The important additional criterion for the award of NOAO time is that both the HST and the ground-based data are required to meet the science goals of the project. It is not essential that the project requires simultaneous NOAO and HST observations. Under this agreement, NOAO time will only be awarded in conjunction with new HST observations (and should not be proposed for in conjunction with an Archival Research or Theory Proposal). Major results from these programs would be credited to NOAO and HST.
NOAO has offered up to 5% of its available time to proposals meeting the stated criteria. NOAO observing time will be implemented during the two 2014 NOAO observing semesters (2014A for February to July 2014 observations, and 2014B for August 2014 to January 2015 observations). Time cannot be requested for the preceding semester, 2013B. Time may be requested only for those facilities listed on the NOAO/NASA Collaboration Webpage. Under this agreement approximately 15-20 nights per telescope per year will be available on most telescopes, with the exceptions of those telescopes on which NOAO gives out fewer nights. Only a fraction of the time is available on some facilities - the WIYN and SMARTS telescopes - and so the 5% cap applies only to this fraction. In addition, time on the CCD Mosaic cameras or other heavily-subscribed resources may be limited by the NOAO Director.
Establishing the technical feasibility of the proposed ground-based observations is the responsibility of the PI, who should review the NOAO documentation or consult with NOAO directly. A description of the technical information that should be included in the proposal is given in Section 9.4.4. The proposal should include an explanation of how the requested observing allocation was calculated. If approved for NOAO time, the PI must submit, by September 26, 2013, an NOAO Phase II form giving detailed observing information appropriate to the particular NOAO telescope and instrument. In addition, for NOAO time on Gemini (only), successful PIs will be required to submit a complete NOAO proposal to NOAO by September 26, 2013 on the standard NOAO proposal form. This will be reviewed by the regular NOAO Time Allocation Committee in order to determine into which Gemini queue the observations will be placed.
