SALT - Southern African Large Telescope

2012 Semester 1 Call for Proposals (1 May - 31 Oct)

The current call for SALT observing proposals is for 2012 Semester 1, for the period 1 May to 31 Oct. The proposal period opens on 20 Jan, when the revised Phase 1 proposal form will be released, and the Phase 1 proposal deadline will be Friday 24 Feb at 18:00 SAST (corresponding to 16:00 UTC).  The previous semester (2011 Semester 2) has been extended for 2 months in order to allow completion of commissioning and accepted proposals.

To aid in writing proposals, a comprehensive information document (Proposal Information for SALT Call for Proposals: 2012 Semester 1) has been produced by SALT Astronomy Operations. It incorporates the latest experiences from SALT Astronomy Operations regarding telescope and instrument performance. The instrument simulator tools have also been updated to reflect the current situation. At the time of this call RSS has not completed full commissioning (e.g. MOS, polarimetry and some F-P modes are still outstanding), so only certain modes are offered and some are still shared risk. The document also includes proposal policies and related information. The SALT website should be consulted from time to time for further updates.

 

 

Changes to the proposal process since the last proposal call (2011 Semester 2):

1. All Co-Is will have to be registered SALT users with the Web Manager.

During the previous call, many Co-Is had incorrect or multiple email addresses, causing a lot of distress as emails did not reach Co-Is and they needed to approve proposals. By requesting all Co-Is to be registered, we will ensure that we have their correct contact details in all proposals. As most SALT users are by now registered with SALT, this requirement is no longer an onerous task.

 

2. There will be a possibility to add multiple students per proposal – the thesis information will be on the Investigator page

 

3. The Moon conditions have reverted to Dark, Gray and Bright.

The percent of SALT time on each Moon category is Dark=50%, Gray=25%, Bright=25%. There is no need to further sub-divide Gray time, for although they represented ~equal steps in sky brightness, the % of time for these conditions were quite small (17% for Bright-Gray and 9% for Dark-Grey).


4. New Priority 4

A new priority class, P4, has been added exclusively for observations which are not necessarily 10m-telescope class science but can be done in extremely poor conditions, e.g. very thick cloud and/or very bad seeing, when otherwise SALT would not be observing. These programs will not be charged and will only be attempted, at SALT Astronomy Operations' discretion, if other priority class program cannot be attempted at that time. Details are provided in the proposal call information documents.


5. Acquisition Overhead

Following efficiency improvements, the acquisition overhead for all modes, except MOS, have been changed from 900 s to 600s. This overhead must be included in the total requested time.


6. The Target table in the Proposal now includes two further columns in addition to the time requested: strictest Moon for this target and ranking within the proposal. This will aid the TACs when splitting proposals according to Moon conditions.


7. Proposals now include a “Minimum Useful Time”

This is in order to aid the TACs in their decision-making process. This can comprise up to the entirety of their requested time, thereby allowing PIs to request an 'all or nothing' time allocation from the TACs.


8. A new section (#15) in the “proposal description” pages of the proposal includes a “Summary of previous SALT results” (possibly optional for some partners). Previous time allocations by SALT to this PI for this and related proposals can be discussed here. Information should include:

      • Proposal Code, time and priority awarded

      •  Actual time observed

      • Summary of results and/or publications


9. In section #16 “proposal description”, South African PIs need to state what their role will be in the project other than proposing and being a co-author on the proposal and the published paper(s).


TAC Responsibility changes:

After the last round of time allocations, it was realised that TACs needed to address several issues in order to successfully assign times to proposals:


  • Each proposal will be allocated a Moon breakdown per priority (as well as the priority breakdown) in order to avoid over-subscription of darker conditions

  • TACs should allocate a minimum time of 900s per priority and/or Moon.

    • This allows for a minimum time of 600s acquisition and 300s science. Any less becomes potentially useless to the PI and is highly inefficient. In fact, while this minimum time will be hard-coded, ideally the TAC should assign the minimum useful time for the PIs science, e.g. a track.

    • It is important to note that each split of Priority and Moon will incur in a minimum of 600s overhead per split, as each Block can only be assigned to a single priority AND Moon setting.

  • Proposal technical feasibility reports will be produced by SALT Ast Ops to aid those TACs that require it.