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Selecting and Scheduling Observing Programmes at Eso Organizations, People and Strategies in Astronomy 2 (OPSA 2), 231-256 Ed. A. Heck, © 2013 Venngeist. SELECTING AND SCHEDULING OBSERVING PROGRAMMES AT ESO FERDINANDO PATAT AND GAITEE A.J. HUSSAIN Observing Programmes Office European Southern Observatory Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 2 D-85748 Garching, Germany [email protected] [email protected] Abstract. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) manages the largest astronomical ground-based optical and near-IR facility on the planet. It typically receives one thousand applications per semester, and it serves about one third of the astronomical community world-wide. In this paper we review the procedures currently in place at ESO for proposal selection and telescope time allocation. 1. Introduction The history of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is marked by steady growth, which has turned it into one of the world-leading, ground- based astronomical facilities1. ESO currently operates two observing sites located on the Chilean Andes: Cerro La Silla and Cerro Paranal. In addition ESO is a partner in the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory, but the telescope allocation process for this facility is independent. The La Silla and Paranal observatories are equipped with a number of telescopes. At La Silla ESO operates the 2.2m, the 3.6m, and 3.5m New Technology Telescope. Cerro Paranal is equipped with the four 8.2m unit telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the 4.1m Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), the 2.6m VLT Survey Telescope (VST), and the four 1.8m auxiliary telescopes of th 1Founded in 1962, ESO just celebrated its 50 birthday. Given a dramatically evolu- tion of conditions in the past decade, this paper updates and replaces an earlier contri- bution in the OSA/OPSA series by Breysacher & Waelkens (2001) 232 FERDINANDO PATAT AND GAITEE A.J. HUSSAIN the VLT Interferometer (VLTI). The four VLT unit telescopes (UT) can be operated in interferometric mode, combining two, three and four units, with a maximum baseline of 134m. Each of the UTs features 3 foci (2 Nasmyth platforms and one Cassegrain focus), so that up to 12 instruments can be simultaneously offered and easily switched during the night. Currently 11 instruments are offered for normal operations. The VLTI is equipped with two interchangeable instruments (MIDI and AMBER), plus one visitor instrument (PIONIER). The two survey tele- scopes feature one single wide-field imager each. Finally, five instruments are permanently mounted and offered on the La Silla telescopes2. ESO also operates the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), a 12m single-dish millimeter and sub-millimeter telescope located on the Chaj- nantor plateau in Chile. APEX is an international collaboration involving the Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Radioastronomie (MPIfR), Onsala Space Ob- servatory (OSO), and ESO. ESO receives about 25% of the observing time, which is allotted in pre-determined time slots. The remaining time is ad- ministered and allocated by the other partners. With this suite of telescopes and instruments it is natural to expect a high interest from the astronomical community worldwide. This is shown in more quantitative terms in Fig. 1, which presents the evolution of the number of distinct co-Investigators (co-I) on ESO proposals from the start of VLT operations to the current day. The plot gives an effective view of the scale of the users community ESO is serving. The number of users applying for time on ESO telescopes changed from about 1200 in 1998 to more than 3000 during the last years, with applicants distributed over about 50 different countries3. This corresponds to one third of the International Astronomical Union members, implying that ESO serves about 30% of the astronomical community. A similar perspective, although more directly related to the telescope time allocation load, is presented in Fig. 2, which shows the history of the number of proposals submitted to ESO (per semester) in the last 35 years. In the pre-VLT era (i.e. before period 63), the number of proposals kept growing and stabilized at around 500. The start of VLT operations can be marked by a rapid increase, bringing the number of proposal submissions above ∼700, followed by a renewed steady growth that finally stabilized at today’s ∼950 proposals per semester, submitted by about 700 distinct Principal Investigators (PI). The total time request averaged over the last 4 years is about 3170 nights per semester (about 65% for Paranal only), of 2The 2.2m telescope is operated by ESO only on a five months per year basis. The remaining time is managed internally by the Max Planck Society. 3Although most of the applications come from scientists affiliated to the fourteen ESO member countries and the host country (Chile), there is no restriction for other countries. © 2013 Venngeist. OBSERVING PROGRAMMES AT ESO 233 Figure 1. Number of distinct co-investigators (co-I) in ESO proposals from the start of VLT operations (P62, October 1998) to ESO period 90 (October 2012). which about 1070 are scheduled for execution in visitor mode or in one of the three service mode rank classes (see Sect. 4.3). The overall observatory pressure (defined here as the ratio between the submitted and the sched- uled time) is ∼3.0. However, at some telescopes (and particularly at some instruments, e.g. FORS2, X-SHOOTER, HARPS), this exceeds 5.0. The distribution of submitted proposals per site is presented in Fig. 3, which illustrates the evolution since the beginning of VLT operations. In the initial phases of the VLT era, La Silla was receiving about 400 proposals per semester. Following the ramping up of the Paranal facility in terms of available telescopes and instruments (and the progressive close-outs of several La Silla telescopes), this number has been steadily decreasing since then, and it is now stable around 110 proposals per semester. This can be compared with the approximately 800 proposals received for Paranal each semester. However, it is clear that the demand on La Silla is still significant if one compares the time requested at the different sites (see Fig. 4). Despite the fact that the number of proposals has decreased by almost a factor of 4, © 2013 Venngeist. 234 FERDINANDO PATAT AND GAITEE A.J. HUSSAIN Figure 2. Number of distinct proposals received by ESO from period 20 (1977) to P90 (2012). This is also known as the “Breysacher-plot”, after ESO astronomer Jaques Breysacher, who produced the first version of the diagram. The number of distinct prin- cipal investigators (PI) is also plotted. The peak observed on P84 coincides with the start of X-Shooter operations. the time request averaged over the last 3 years is about 900 nights/semester, to be compared with the ∼1450 nights/semester during the first 3 years of VLT operations. The NTT and the 3.6m telescope remain in high demand, and the tendency is to request the time through Large Programmes4 (LPs). This is reflected in the time allocation: in P90 at the 3.6m telescope ∼73% of the time was allotted to LPs, 18% to Normal programmes and 9% to GTO. With the deployment of the PESSTO public spectroscopic survey (which has an allocation of 90 nights/year), the NTT is moving towards a very similar configuration. 4Large Programme proposals request over 100 hours of telescope time that can be distributed up to four consecutive years on La Silla (or two consecutive years on Paranal). See also Sect. 2.3. © 2013 Venngeist. OBSERVING PROGRAMMES AT ESO 235 2. Call for proposals and proposal submission The process of time allocation, which is called Phase 1 at ESO, starts with the preparation and the distribution of the call for proposals. This is released twice a year: in August for the semester that runs April to September and in February for the semester that runs October to March (of the following year)5. The call for proposals serves a double purpose: it is the official document for the Science Policy of ESO, and it contains all the technical information required to prepare a proposal, including news about the availability of instrumentation in the upcoming semester. The call is edited by the Observing Programmes Office (OPO), with the input provided by all the parties involved in telescope operations. It is released four weeks before the proposal submission deadline. Proposals are submitted through a web-based interface, accessible via the ESO User Portal (UP)6. In the current implementation, the proposal is prepared by editing a LaTeX template, which forms part of the proposal package, called the ESOFORM package. This is released together with each call for proposals. Once a proposal is ready, it can be submitted via the UP, through the ESO Web Application for Submitting Proposals (WASP). On uploading the proposal, WASP carries out a series of formal checks to ensure that the proposal complies with the conditions set out in the call for proposals. The WASP interface can be used by the applicants at any time prior to submission to validate their proposals. When the proposals have passed these checks, they can be submitted. At this stage their content is stored in a dedicated database. Although the LaTeX-based system has been used for a few decades, ESO is now considering a new system that would be fully web-based and that would incorporate a number of new features that would help the user configure their proposal more precisely according to their requirements, (e.g., target visibility windows, exposure time calculations, verification of target conflicts). While the proposal system is open for submissions four weeks before the deadline, the vast majority of the submissions take place during the last few days, with close to 800 proposals submitted during the last 24 hours.
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