JCMT

Call for Proposals for Observing Time

Semester 12B

Submission Deadline:

For telescope time in Semester 12B (1st August 2012 - 31st January 2013) the closing date for receipt of proposals is

(Applicants from the University of Hawaii have a different deadline).

NEWS for 12B

Important Notes

• Be sure to submit your proposal to the correct national queue.
  Submitting to the wrong queue may result in the rejection of the proposal.
• Applicants are urged to itemize explicitly, in the Technical section of the proposal, their inputs to their integration time calculations. This is essential to allow the assigned Technical Assessor to confirm the proposal's feasibility.
• The JCMT Board has decided that the science goals of
  • the JCMT Legacy Surveys (JLS),
  • the Guaranteed Time (GT) for the SCUBA-2 commissioning team, and
  • the Staff Time (ST) awarded by the JCMT Board to JCMT staff for their role in the commissioning of SCUBA-2
  are all to be protected from duplication. If proposed targets overlap with those in the programs above - as determined using the Clash Detector - applicants should ensure that sufficient justification is given in the proposal as to how and why the proposed observations and science differ from these projects. See below for complete details on how to check for such overlap.
• JCMT operates a 12-hour night, running from approximately 7:30pm to 7:30am HST. Earlier starts may compromise short-wavelength data. This table shows source transit times during semester B.
• Your proposal must specify the weather conditions (read opacity) that it requires or can tolerate.
  The amount of time available per weather/opacity band varies through the year.
• Projects which request 100hours or more of band 4,5 weather are encouraged.
• In proposals where all members of an observing consortium are to be considered as CoIs: please provide a link to a webapge showing those members.
• Applicants from countries of the European Union (except the UK and the Netherlands) may be eligible for RadioNet funding to aid with their travel expenses. (See below for further details).

          Contents
• Available Instrumentation and Observing Modes
• To Which Queue Should You Send Your Application? - Where's your home base ?
• Proposal Submission and results

• Calculating Integration Times
• Avoiding conflicts with protected science
• Atmospheric Opacity Statistics - average weather conditions

• Observer Status and Queue Observing - whether you should expect to travel to Hawaii - or not !
• RadioNet support of European Applicants - Are you eligible ?
• The JCMT Users e-mail exploder - Keep informed.

Available Instrumentation and Observing Modes

Continuum Receivers -

• SCUBA-2 (simultaneous 450µm & 850µm imaging)

Heterodyne Receivers - General status

• RxA3 (211-272 GHz) - has a single receptor. Status & Characteristics
• HARP (325-375 GHz) - is a 16-element B-band array. Status & Characteristics
• RxW(D) (630-710 GHz) - Dual-channel receiver. Instrumental sensitivities should be used with caution.

Heterodyne Backend

• ACSIS - Available bandwidths, spectral resolutions and backend modes.
  • The ACSIS correlating spectrometer is a highly flexible backend; it was designed to work with HARP, but it works with all our heterodyne receivers.

Polarimetry

• ROVER - a heterodyne polarimeter - is offered for use with RxA in semester 12B on a Shared-Risks basis. Those interested should contact Antonio Chrysostomou

Several modes of heterodyne observing and several switching schemes are supported and are described at http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/software/jcmtot/het_obsmodes.html.

Calculating Integration Times

A Heterodyne Integration TimE Calculator HITEC, and a SCUBA-2 integration time calculator are available.
They should be used to calculate the integration time needed to reach a given RMS per channel or beam or output-map pixel as a function of receiver, frequency, observing mode, elevation and sky opacity.
Formulae for the SCUBA-2 calculations are also available on-line.

The JCMT Observing Tool (JCMTOT) gives equivalent results.

• Overheads for pointing, focussing, and calibrations should not be added to the time request. These activities will be accounted for separately.

  Calibration observations (eg. focus, pointing, flux calibrators) and other unavoidable overheads (eg receiver tuning) are no longer charged to science projects and instead are charged to an observatory accounting code. There is therefore no need for applicants to provide calibration overhead estimates in their proposals.

  The observatory will perform regular and appropriate calibration observations to ensure that all science data obtained are sensibly calibrated.

  • Spectroscopically, this involves observations of one of our Spectral Line Standards at one of about ten different frequencies (ibid). If your program frequency is one of these, then you're decidely in luck. In any case, the calibration allows you to assess the performance of the instrument. We will perform such an observation at least once per program unless a previous calibration is still appropriate, and more often if circumstances change or if more than a couple of hours pass.
  • For continuum work, continuum calibrators will be observed at both operational wavelengths of SCUBA-2 (450µm, 850µm) at appropriate times and airmass to meet the general needs of the science programs.

  If a proposal demands more unusual or more frequent calibrations then this needs to be clearly stated in the proposal and the time for these calibrations requested explicitly. If you have queries about what our default calibrations might be or what extra overheads are generated by your calibration requirements please get in touch with us.

Avoiding conflicts with protected science

The JCMT Board has decided that the science goals of the JLS, GT and ST projects are to be protected against duplication by PI projects, and that scientific merit should be the guiding principle in cases of overlap. No regions of the sky are off-limits, but PIs who submit proposals to observe fields claimed by the protected projects will be required to provide additional justification for so doing. If that justification is not provided or is insufficient, time will not be awarded. It is anticipated that time will normally be awarded to PIs in such cases only when the observations represent an extension of the protected projects: e.g., in depth, in area or in frequency. (Note that these rules do not apply to the University of Hawaii queue.)

Applicants may identify potential conflicts using a web-based Clash Detector tool. Note, however, that the tool reports only positional clashes. To determine whether a reported clash constitutes a real conflict a comparison should also be made with the project depths at

• JLS : http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/JCMT/surveys/SurveyAllocations.html#depths.
• GT & ST : http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/JCMT/observing/gt_depths.html

Atmospheric Opacity Statistics

Summer months on Mauna Kea tend to be wetter than winter months. For how much time is generally available in certain weather bands at certain times of the year: click here (discussion reprinted from the Spring 2007 issue of the JCMT Newsletter). For example, during average winter months (Dec-April) 10-15% of the time is band 1, while in summertime the fraction is under 5%. Good weather is more frequent during El Nino. About 15% of the time we encounter band 5 weather, and as much again is lost entirely to bad weather.

Proposal Submission

If you have a Northstar account already you can login using your username and password; new users should register first.

Help regarding the submission process is available here - - - and in our Help pages ! Results are sent to applicants following the national TAG meetings (which are usually in May or November) and after ratification at the ITAC meeting (June or December).

To Which Queue Should You Send Your Application?:

Proposals should be submitted to the United Kingdom-, the Netherlands-, the Canadian-, or the International- queue, depending on the primary funding agency of the Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-Investigators (CoIs):

• If the PI is employed by a UK, Netherlands or Canadian institution then submit the proposal to the UK, Netherlands or Canadian queue respectively.
• If the PI is not employed by a UK, Netherlands or Canadian institution, but at least one of the Co-Is is employed by an institution from one of these three countries, then submit the proposal to the national queue of the first-named of those Co-Is.
• If neither the PI nor any of the Co-Is is employed by an institution in the UK, the Netherlands, or Canada, then the proposal must be submitted to the International queue.
• Employees of the JAC are considered as 'International', unless they are the PI.
• If you are in any doubt about where to submit, then please e-mail Iain Coulson.

Observer Status and Flexible Observing

All queues now operate using dedicated observing blocks. The observer during these blocks is usually associated with one of the high-priority programs to be observed, but is effectively running the entire (national) queue in a flexible manner. All applicants should anticipate the possibility that they may or may not be asked to be an observer for their national queue. Requests for 'classical' observer status should be explained in the "Scheduling Preferences" section of the proposal.

Flexible Scheduling

RadioNet support of European Applicants:

The JCMT is a member of the European Union's RadioNet consortium of European radio observatories. Under the terms of this programme, eligible European observers at JCMT may have their travel and subsistence costs reimbursed by RadioNet. The JCMT also receives a fee for the time spent observing eligible projects, the proceeds of which are being used to fund the development of SCUBA-2.

The primary eligibility criterion is that the PI, and at least half of all the applicants, must be from an EU member country (excluding NL and UK) or an EU associated state. Proposals should be submitted to the appropriate queue following the rules for all programs described elsewhere in this Call, and will be assessed by the appropriate TAG alongside other proposals in that queue. The PIs of successful, RadioNet-eligible proposals will be informed of the procedures for reimbursement. For more information please contact Iain Coulson.

The JCMT Users e-mail exploder:

From time to time, subscribers to the 'jcmt_users' email list will receive notices on the status of the JCMT, call for proposals, etc. To subscribe, please visit http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/jcmt_users

And Finally:

If you've read all this and still have questions about the scheduling, the submission deadlines, the procedures, etc - please contact me.

Iain Coulson
JCMT Scheduler