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Call for ProposalsThis document is also available in PDF format. Semester S09A: Fubruary 1, 2009 -- July 31, 2009Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of JapanPlease refer to http://subarutelescope.org/Observing/index.html for the latest information. 1. INTRODUCTION AND PROPOSAL ACCEPTANCE POLICYSubaru Telescope invites observing proposals for Semester S09A, which will run from February 1, 2009 until July 31, 2009. For S09A, the following instruments, Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS), High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS), Subaru Prime Focus Camera (Suprime-Cam), Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (IRCS), Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrometer (COMICS), the new Subaru AO188 system (only with IRCS), and Multi-Object Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (MOIRCS) will be available for open use by visiting observers (see also [note 1]). [note 1] Those who intend to use carry-in instruments are required to make contact with the Director of the Subaru Observatory in advance as early as possible. Any "carry-in instrument" proposals without going through such a procedure (notification or negotiation beforehand) can not be accepted. The Open Use programs in S09A consist of (1) Open Use Normal Programs, (2) Open Use Intensive Programs, and (3) Open Use Service Programs. As a rule, about 65% of total nights are assigned to the Open Use Programs. See the individual web pages for descriptions and instructions for submitting your proposal either as an Intensive Program or a Service Program.
There are also some limitations in the schedule and operation of some instruments for Semester S09A, so please read this Call for Proposals carefully before submitting your proposals. Please also refer to the section 7 for the status reports of these instruments. Although Subaru Telescope is entirely funded by the Japanese government, we also invite proposals from the international community. For the past semesters, about 10% of the available nights were allocated to such international proposals (see [note 2]). In any case, non-Japanese researchers are encouraged to submit their proposals in collaboration with Japanese researchers. [note 2] International proposals are defined as those submitted by non-Japanese principal investigators (PIs) belonging to non-Japanese institutions. Any questions about Subaru Telescope Open Use, including proposal submission,
should be addressed to
2. OVERVIEW OF OPEN USE SCHEDULE
3. PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALSFrom S05B semester, we accept only electronically submitted proposals. Applicants are requested to fill in LaTex source of the application form and make a PDF file describing the scientific justification; then both files should be sent to us by an e-mail. The following explanations are intended mainly for those submitting the Normal/Intensive Program proposals. (Some more additional information concerning Intensive Program proposals is also available at the relevant page.) Applicants of Service Program proposals should consult the specific instruction page, since there are several important points to be remarked. 3-1. Files to Be Prepared3-1-1. Application FormThe template LaTeX file of the application form and the corresponding style file for this S09A semester are available from the Application form page . After you have filled in this template LaTeX file (while following the instructions presented as comments in the template), please be sure to confirm that no LaTeX compiling errors are generated and there is no problem with the finally resulting application form. Although you can rename the LaTeX file as you wish, the extention ".tex" must be kept in any case. 3-1-2. Scientific JustificationThe PDF file of the Scientific Justification may in principle be freely prepared without any specific format; however, the following conditions should be fulfilled. Proposals violating any of these requirements may be disqualified without being reviewed.
[note 3: for Japanese proposers] If you wish, extra pages of Jananese direct translation may be
appended. In this case, please keep the following rule: 3-2. How to Submit the FilesWhen the preparation has been finished, you should send your LaTex Application Form and your PDF scientific justification to the Proposal Management System, PROMS Please note that the PROMS address has been changed from the S08A semester. Please send your proposals to
our e-mail address, If your files have arrived at us, you should soon receive a reply mail, which may prompt you to check the
contents of the submitted files on the web, or may request you to resubmit in case there is any trouble.
You must confirm that you surely get the e-mail of response from our proposal management
system, PROMS. If you don't receive it even an elapse of more than 1 hour, please contact
Unfortunately, however, there is no guarantee that our automatic processing system is compliant with all type of attached files sent from various mail programs (based on different file-encoding systems). Accordingly, if your trial of mailing files has ended up with an unsuccessful result, we would recommend you to adopt the following procedure (i.e., case(3) above) using the uuencode command of the UNIX system, which has been confirmed to work successfully. Suppose that your "*.tex" file for the application form and the ".pdf" file for the scientific justification are named as "appform.tex" and "scijust.pdf", respectively. Then in the UNIX machine (or that of analogous OS such as Linux, FreeBSD, cygwin, etc.), move to the directory where these files are placed, and execute as follows in the command line: uuencode scijust.pdf scijust.pdf > scijust.txt
Then, the two files must have been correctly sent to 3-3. How to Revise or Cancel Your SubmissionIf you want to revise or cancel your submission, please refer to PROMS page. 4. HOW TO COMPLETE THE NORMAL AND INTENSIVE PROGRAM APPLICATION FORMS
5. MEMBERS OF THE TIME ALLOCATION COMMITTEE
6. STATUS OF TELESCOPEThe latest telescope performance can be found at http://subarutelescope.org/Observing/Telescope/index.html. If you have any specific questions related to your application for S09A, please contact Dr. Daigo Tomono .7. STATUS OF INSTRUMENTSFOCAS, HDS, IRCS, Suprime-Cam, COMICS, and MOIRCS will be available for open use in Semester S09A. Applicants may refer to http://subarutelescope.org/Observing/Instruments/index.html for an overview of the current Subaru instruments. If you have any question, please contact the support astronomer (S.A.) in charge of each instrument. 7-1. IRCSS.A. Dr. Tae-Soo Pyo IRCS is available for imaging, grism spectroscopy and echelle spectroscopy on the Nasmyth platform without/with the AO 188 using natural guide stars. Now the thermal background levels show low values comparable to those of 2005 since the image rotator of IR Nasmyth focus has a new coating from May 2008. The sensitivity information given in the IRCS instrument page already takes into account these low thermal background levels. 7-2. FOCASS.A. Dr. Takashi Hattori FOCAS
is available for imaging and long-slit spectroscopy. Linear/circular polarimetry are also available for both imaging polarimetry and spectropolarimetry. A limited number of user filters may be accepted. If you wish to use your own filters, please contact Takashi Hattori for detailed information before submitting your proposal. 7-3. HDSS.A. Dr. Akito Tajitsu HDS is available for optical high-dispersion echelle spectroscopy. The signal to noise ratios and the spectral formats under your desired settings can be estimated with the HDS Exposure Time Calculator and the HDS Echelle Format Simulator on the web, respectively. An iodine-cell for precise radial velocity measurements is available. Due to the earthquake in Oct. 2006, there was a significant damage in optical alignment of HDS. It has been completely recovered in Jan. 2007. Now, HDS is achieving its highest spectral resolution (R - 150,000 with 0".2 slit width) over the whole CCDs' surface. But, there is a little change in Echelle dispersion (stretching about 1.2%), compared with the spectral format before the earthquake. A limited number of user filters for blocking unwanted orders in longslit mode may be accepted; please contact Akito Tajitsu for specifications before submitting your proposal. Please see the instrument web page for the currently available narrow-band filters for the longslit mode. 7-4. Suprime-CamS.A. Dr. Hisanori Furusawa Suprime-Cam
is offered for wide-field optical imaging. If the total number of filters requested in one observational run exceeds 10, we will not be able to accommodate all the filters in the filter stacker. Please refer to the filter operation policy for details. Replacement of CCDs and evaluation of the new system is underway. The performance of the new system will be presented in the Call for proposals for S09B. For S09A, we will offer the Suprime-Cam with the new CCDs on a shared-risk basis only. Please see the instrument page for detailed information. 7-5. COMICSS.A. Dr. Takuya Fujiyoshi COMICS is available for mid-infrared (8 to 25 μm) imaging and spectroscopy. Diffraction limited images can be obtained both in the N (10 μm) and Q (20μm) windows. In the N-band (8-13 μm), three modes of spectroscopy are available: low- (R~250), medium- (~2,500), and high-resolution (~10,000, in the vicinities of the 9.0 μm [Ar III], 10.5 μm [SIV], and 12.8 μm [Ne II] lines). Medium- (~2,500, 17-25 μm) and high resolution (~5,300, near 17 μm) spectroscopy are available in the Q-band. Please refer to the instrument web pages for details. 7-6. AOS.A. Dr. Yosuke Minowa The AO36 has already been decommissioned. Instead, the AO188 become available from S08B. In the S09A semester, the AO188 will be operated only in the natural guide star (NGS) mode with the IRCS. The preliminary performance of AO188 with NGS is described in the AO188 www page. Please ensure that you provide sufficient details in Entry 14. "Observing Method and Technical Details" of your proposal. Applicants should describe the nature of the targets, namely whether they are extended or point sources, as well as the natural guide star properties such as separation to a target, brightness, and acceptable minimum Strehl ratio or FWHM. Extended objects cannot be used as guide stars. Non-sidereal objects cannot be used as wavefront reference. It is essential that you consider the important checkpoints listed on the AO web page. 7-7. MOIRCSS.A. Dr. Ichi Tanaka MOIRCS is available for wide-field imaging and multi-object (MOS) /long-slit spectroscopy in near-infrared wavelengths. The engineering-grade chip, temporalily used as the channel-1 detector since 2007 October, has been replaced by the scientific-grade one in July 2008. The assessment of the new detector is still under way. Please check the most recent updates through the MOIRCS website. For the imaging mode, YJHKs filters as well as some narrow-band filters are available (note that NO narrow-band filters are available for service observations). We changed the default Ks-band filter to the wedged "fringe-free" type since July 2008. We are planning to replace the current J and H filters to the same type. If you want to use the old filters, please explicitly specify the reason in the technical details of your proposal. For spectroscopy we have low (R~500), medium (R~1300), and high (VPH:R~3000) dispersion modes for both multi-object (MOS) /long-slit spectroscopy. The Y-band window for R1300 grism is now available under the shared-risk operation, as it is not fully tested yet. The R3000 VPH grisms are also to be opened under the shared-risk policy again. Proposers planning the VPH observation are required to understand well about the character of the grisms through the information on the relevant web pages. Please explicitly explain that your observation can be executed under the current setting of the VPH in Entry 14 (Observing Method and Technical Details) of the proposal. Please read carefully the related information on MOIRCS website. For MOS mode, the number of MOS masks for use should be less than 16 during one contiguous observing run. Proposers planning to use the MOS mode must explicitly describe the number of MOS masks you need to use in Entry 11. Please refer to the instrument web page for details. 8. DATA RIGHTS AND ARCHIVINGSuccessful applicants will have exclusive access to their data for a period of 18 months from the time of observation, after which the data will be freely available from the Subaru archive. Applicants may request an extension to this proprietary period in their Scientific Justification, but such an extension will only be awarded in exceptional circumstances. 9. NOTES FOR PUBLICATION FROM SUBARU TELESCOPEWe hope that the data you will obtain with Subaru telescope will achieve its intended science goals. We ask all the Open Use observers to follow the Subaru Telescope acknowledgment policy. All papers which make use of data taken with Subaru Telescope facilities should include the following acknowledgment on the title page as a footnote to the title. Based [in part] on data collected at Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. We encourage you to release your results obtained from Subaru Open Use to the general public for astronomical educational and outreach purposes through NAOJ. Please refer to the Subaru Web site (http://subarutelescope.org/Observing/Proposals/Publish/index.html) for details.
Applicants may submit proposals for Target of Opportunity (ToO) observations of transient and/or rare phenomena with specific objects and clear observational strategy, such as nearby supernovae, Gamma-Ray Burst follow-up, etc. Proposals should be submitted in the same manner as normal Open Use proposals, described above, making it clear which Subaru instruments can be used to perform the ToO observations and how much time will be required. In addition, all ToO proposals must include at least one member of Subaru Telescope (Hawaii) staff as a Co-I. In addition, the Director may override scheduled observations to execute ToO observations as an observatory program should an important unexpected celestial event occur. Subaru Telescope will make every effort to compensate observers for time lost due to ToO observations.
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