The offered observing program types
are:
1. Guest projects
Guest projects are standard programs requiring
less than 200
hours and lasting only one term (1 semester).
2. Large projects
Large projects (LPs) are proposals that require significant
amounts of telescope time (
see details below) justified
by the potential scientific payoff. The exact amount of time
available for LPs may be limited depending on proposal pressure
and/or requested observing frequency. LPs are defined as those
that obey the following rules:
• the proposed projects should address
high-quality and high-impact science that requires significant
observing efforts;
• the observations should utilize the
core strength of the requested facility;
• LPs should be projects that cannot be
realized (or only with difficulties) with standard observing
proposals, i.e. projects requiring
particularly high
observing time, on one or more of the INAF radio telescopes.
A large proposal is defined according to different constraints,
depending on the number of terms it spans. If the proposal is
multi-term, it is also a long proposal (see section 3).
Large sigle term
A single-term project is defined as large when at least one of
the antennas is required for more than 200 hours, regardless of
the observing mode (single-dish or interferometry).
Large multi-term (long + large)
A multi-term (long) project is additionally defined as large in
the following cases:
- for single-dish observations, when the total amount of
requested hours (whole project) is >600 hours;
- for interferometry observations, when the per-telescope
average amount of requested hours (whole project) is >600
hours.
LPs proposals should be submitted at the same deadline and using
the same proposal form as for other proposals, but will be
allowed a more extensive justification (up to 10 pages,
including figures, tables, and all the additional information
required for an LP) including details on the following aspects:
• Scientific background;
• Observing procedure;
• Data reduction and analysis plan;
• Data release policy;
• Publication strategy;
• It is expected that the final data
products (e.g., reduced maps or cubes, source catalogs, etc...)
will be made publicly available
to the community
along with the publication of the major goal results of the
project. A data release plan shall also be included
in the proposal.
• An outreach plan and a commitment to
disseminate the project results to the general public will be an
additional asset.
The proposal for a LP will be evaluated and ranked by the TAC as
part of the normal proposal review process. Since it is expected
that LPs will commit a large fraction of observational and
scheduling resources, large proposals require very high ranking
to be allocated.
INAF expects periodic progress reports and a quick
publication/release of the data and data products, and reserves
the right to revisit allocations made to a given LP if
insufficient progress is reported. To facilitate the access to
data products by the wider community, each approved LP must
create an accessible web link of the project.
3. Long (multi-term) projects
Long projects are programs that require allocation over more
than one term (semester). They can be of diverse nature
(monitoring of sources, large projects that cannot be reasonably
conducted in one term, scheduling constraints due to
simultaneous observations with other telescopes, etc.). Please
note that, according to the amount of requested time, your long
project might also fall in the large category (becoming
large+long; see section above for details).
It is up to the TAC to evaluate the real need of the
multi-term condition. Even in case of recognized need of
multi-term observations, the TAC is free to decide whether to
grant a long-term project status.
PIs are requested to indicate the overall duration of the
project, in terms of number of semesters needed. If the
long-term status is granted,
the PIs are asked to: i) submit a light update, containing only
the time request and the observations table, six months after
the approval/confirmation of the long project status; ii) submit
a fully-updated proposal, that includes a progress status
report, after one year from the approval/confirmation of the
long project status, in order for the TAC to evaluate whether
the long-term status can be further granted.
Please notice: users proposing a long project are invited to
store the Modifier ID they receive after the submission. It
will be required to submit the update(s) if the long status is
confirmed. Light updates do not require the use of any
template. Fully-updated proposals, instead, must be produced
using the proposal template. In the submission web
form, It is not necessary to fill in again all the
general info/settings: only the bottom part ("Submit") of the
page is to be used.
4. NAPA projects
NAPA (Non A-Priori Assignable) are
single-term (i.e.
incompatible with the "long project" type) proposals recommended
for targets, or class of objects for which there is a high
chance, in a statistical sense, to foresee the occurrence of a
peculiar event that triggers the observations. In particular,
two main sub-categories can be identified within this type of
’triggered’ proposals:
i) those proposals targeting a well defined list of targets,
with names and coordinates
ii) those proposals targeting a class of objects, for which no
coordinates can a priori be provided
For both categories a very stringent trigger criterion (or set
of criteria) has to be provided by the proposers.
For the
second category, a potential risk of preempting a class of
sources exists and has to be confidently avoided. The
scientific justification has to explicitly report the frequency
of occurrence expected for the triggering event(s), the maximum
number of events requested to be observed, and the corresponding
maximum amount of total observing time requested. In this
category should also fall projects that are part of MoUs (in
such a case, a copy of the MoU has to be provided to the TAC
along with the proposal (see
general
guidelines).
5. Target Of Opportunity
Target of Opportunity (ToO) projects should target:
a) unforeseeable objects/events that requires an extremely
prompt scheduling of the observations (
and not fitting the
NAPA category)
and/or
b) urgent observations (asking a limited amount time) motivated
by new discoveries of extremely high scientific potential
A proposal for a ToO has to demonstrate the exceptionally of the
proposed target and an extremely high scientific impact. In
addition, the
justification has to clearly spell out the reasons for having
proposed outside the regular call for proposals, as well as the
urgency to be scheduled on very short time. ToO proposals will
be evaluated by the TAC in contact with the
Officer-in-Charge/scheduler of the facility(ies) requested, for
possible scheduling issues.
1. Director's Discretionary Time
Users can exceptionally apply for Director Discretionary Time
(DDT). This is a flexible and limited time at the disposal of
the Directors of the institutes hosting the telescopes.
This time can be exploited for unforeseeable needs, such as
extra maintenance, tests, recover time, instruments development
and also for feasibility tests and short-time scientific
measurements. DDT projects can involve one or more of the
Italian antennas, together with other facilities.
Notably, a DDT proposal must explicitly report the reason why a
regular proposal (e.g. ToO, NAPA, guest) was not submitted
instead.
Indeed, whenever possible, proposers are strongly encouraged to
submit their proposals within the appropriate submission
deadlines.
For recovery time requests, it is not necessary to submit a DDT
proposal: PIs are requested to submit a post-observation report
(using
this form) and
send an e-mail to the Directors (in CC to the RDO and
schedulers) of the involved facilities.
Normally, DDT observations have lower priority with respect to
TAC-approved programs.
2. Legacy projects
INAF may also promote Legacy projects. These are very large
projects (1000 hours or more) addressing broad scientific goals
that are of interest for the scientific community at large, and
that can be conducted to the benefit of the entire community.
These programs are not led by individual research groups, rather
they are conducted by a dedicated team and the data products
made available to the community soon after the project
conclusion (or even during the project) with no proprietary
time. The need to conduct a legacy project may be raised
by the INAF Scientific Director who, after consultation with the
scientific community through a dedicated call, will nominate a
review team (that might be the TAC itself) to perform a thorough
proposal selection. Unsolicited proposals from the scientific
community are also welcome.
In both cases, legacy projects should always be characterized
by:
• high level of commensality
• rapid delivery of data products to the community
• no proprietary time
Legacy projects have the same proposal form as that of large
projects, but in addition they must be accompanied by a white
paper that collects the interests of the scientific community.
Each Legacy program will have a "core team", with a wide range
of expertise, that is responsible of all aspects of the project:
observations, data reduction and analysis, release of processed
scientific products.
The legacy project description must include the same information
listed above for large projects.
