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Applying for JCMT Time
Applying for Time on the JCMT
The Proposal Deadline for ALL
queues (except University of Hawaii) for 2009 semester A is
Monday, 15 September 2008
midnight UT
(14:00 HST)
The usual deadlines for proposals for ALL queues is
- 15 March for semester B (August through January), and
- 15 September for semester A (February through July).
There are several important points to consider when preparing and
submitting a proposal:
- The proposal deadline is a HARD limit. Proposals
submitted after the deadline will be rejected by the system.
- Be sure to submit your proposal to the correct national queue.
Submitting to the wrong queue may result in the rejection of the
proposal. Click here for rules on how to select
the correct queue.
- The JCMT operates on a 12-hour night, running from approximately
7:30pm to 7:30am. Click here for a
table showing source transit time through semester A, and here for a
table showing source transit time through semester B.
- The JCMT Legacy Surveys
have begun and will continue for several semesters. The JCMT
Board has decided that the science goals of the surveys are to
be protected from duplication. Prospective proposers must
therefore ensure that, if their proposed targets overlap with
survey fields, sufficient justification is given in the
proposal as to how and why the proposed observations and
science differ from the survey project. See the
Call for Proposals
for details.
- Applicants from European Union countries (excepting the UK and the
Netherlands) may be eligible for RadioNet funding, if their
proposals meet certain requirements. Click here for details.
Judith Irwin wrote an article on writing a good
proposal, which you can access here.
Although now more than a decade old and some of
the details on how time is allocated are dated, the article is still
useful as a guide to writing successful applications for telescope
time.
JCMT Proposal Submission Procedure
The NorthStar
proposal submission tool will be available between 19 August and
15 September 2008 to receive proposals for observing with JCMT in 09a.
Northstar is fully web-based and can be accessed using most browsers at:
http://hokuakau.jach.hawaii.edu/
NB: On your first connection with this server you may need to
- 'Add an exception', and
- 'View the certificate'
This is the first semester we will run Northstar from the JAC.
Previously registered users will be able to login
using their old usernames and passwords.
New accounts can be created from the login page. Details on this
and other aspects of the application are available at the new
Help-page
as well as the 'Help' links available within almost every page of the
Northstar application.
Please take care with your email address: the initial password will be sent
to it and it will be used as a general identifier throughout the tool.
WE URGENTLY ADVISE ALL FIRST-TIME USERS TO CAREFULLY READ THE 'READ ME
FIRST' SECTION AS WELL AS THE 'HELP' ON EACH PAGE, WHICH MAY GIVE
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO THE JCMT OR TO THE PAGE/POP-UP.
A summary of some of the features of the application follows:
- Saving an Intermediate version can be done at any time during the
process. We recommend that proposers use the 'Save and Continue' option
frequently while working on the proposal to avoid loss of work due to
unexpected connection problems. At any time 'Save and Exit' can be used so that
one can continue the proposal at another time or to allow one to switch
to another proposal. It is also possible to view the "complete"
proposal pdf file at any stage with the 'Save and Preview' option.
- Submission and Retraction: once finished, the proposal can be
officially submitted (i.e. 'Save and
Submit'). At that time a project id will be assigned and a
confirmation message will be sent. Any submitted proposal can be
retracted before the deadline. A retracted proposal may be modified and
re-submitted (before the deadline), or deleted; in either case, no
previous versions of a retracted proposal will ever be admitted for
review.
- the tool supports assigning different roles to
the co-applicants. The 'Contact
author'
is the main person responsible for the proposal. 'Active participants' receive an
invitation notification and can also View and Edit the proposal (after
creating an
account
using the email address used in the invitation). 'Non-active participants' will
receive a notification and can View the proposal after submission. Official PI status
can be given to any of the applicants and roles can be modified at will.
- When collaborating on a proposal, locks will be put in place to
avoid concurrent access. However, an applicant can opt to ignore the
lock and usurp control with the associated loss of updates from the
earlier user. Regulating team access is left to the responsibility of
the team members.
- The Proposal section of the tool consist of 4 main tab pages.
Navigate between these by clicking on the desired tab rather than the
Back/Forward button of the browser! The four main tab pages are:
- These can be filled in any order (with one exception, see
below). It should be noted that the JCMT is a 'plug-in' into a more
general structure that applies to all telescopes that use the
NorthStar account.
While the fields have
been kept as close as possible to JCMT's previous proposal form, there
are a few differences that originate from the fact that this tool is
intended as a "synergy" product amongst facilities, ultimately aimed at
lowering the barrier to using more than one observatory.
- The fill-in fields on the pages are stored in a database that can
be used to support the TAG process and Phase-II observation program
submission. However, the Science
and Technical justifications are kept free format documents: either
Postscript or PDF files are acceptable. Please make sure to read the 'Instructions for preparation' on
the Justification page. A page limit of 2 pages plus an optional
figures page will be strictly imposed, with the following exceptions,
which are allowed 3 pages plus a figures page:
- UK & CANADA: LONG-TERM PROPOSALS (more than one semester)
- UK:
LARGE PROPOSALS (asking for 96 hours or more)
- CANADA: JCMT THESIS PROPOSALS
(with the thesis student at a Canadian institution as the PI),
- In order to get NorthStar to accept a 3-page justification, the
appropriate boxes ('long-term',
'large', 'thesis') need to be checked first on the Observing Request or
Additional Issues pages.
- The Observing Request page asks to specify the observing time
request per weather band AND per instrument. The two totals should be
equal. The reason to ask for both is that the technical evaluators in
the past have had problems assessing proposals because it would not be
clear from the technical justification which instruments/observations
where planned for which weather-band.
IMPORTANT: ALL TIMES
SPECIFIED SHOULD INCLUDE OBSERVATIONAL AND CALIBRATION OVERHEADS.
- Objects and coordinates can be specified either by hand, through
SIMBAD, or via a text-based Target list. Please see the relevant
section of the built-in help files for more information.
Finally, Northstar has been
used now for several semesters by the JCMT and several other
observatories. It was developed under the umbrella of the
Synergy workgroup of RadioNet with the support of all of its partners
and is expected to be deployed at more observatories in the
future. While we have tried to the best of our ability to check
out the utility and the JCMT-specific portions in particular,
unanticipated issues may come up, in which case we ask for your
patience and that you try to contact us immediately. If problems
related to Northstar prevent
a timely submission, if confirmed, we will still accept the proposal.
If you have other questions not covered by the help files, feel free to
contact the JCMT.
PROPOSAL SCIENTIFIC
and TECHNICAL JUSTIFICATION
Scientific and Technical JUSTIFICATIONS should be prepared offline, on
your
own computer, and then uploaded. Before submission, the entire
proposal,
including the uploaded file(s) in their final placement, can be viewed
as a
pdf file, which will also be used during the review process.
The Science and Technical Justifications can be supplied EITHER
TOGETHER
in a single document (First Justification File), OR SEPARATELY (use
Second
Justification File for the Technical discussion) as was required in
earlier semesters.
The total LENGTH of the text for the justifications together is
restricted
to 2 pages; the balance is left up to the proposers. For figures and
tables
there may be 1 optional extra page which can be uploaded separately.
The font size should be no smaller than 11 points.
The proposal must be printable on A4 paper.
The uploaded documents will receive header and footer lines to identify
them properly within the proposal. Therefore, the area covered with
text and or figures should be at most:
width = 595 points
height = 842
points
Margins:
left = 56 points
right = 56 points
top = 70 points
bottom = 56
points
Appropriate uploadable ps files have been obtained with LaTeX using the
following commands:
% Example LaTeX commands to generate a NorthStar justification ps file
\documentclass[a4paper, 11pt]{article}
\oddsidemargin=-0.54cm
\evensidemargin=-0.54cm
\topmargin=-1.2cm
\textwidth=17cm
\textheight=25cm
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
% TEXT OF JUSTIFICATION HERE
\end{document}
This is an example only, and neither the NorthStar team nor the Time
Allocation Committee can take responsibility for correct operation or
use
of external software such as LaTeX or Microsoft Word.
PROPOSAL TARGET LIST
Source coordinates can be entered in one of three ways:
- directly in
NorthStar
- obtained from within the tool from e.g. SIMBAD
- uploaded
using a text file.
The format of the latter (i.e. a text file) is as
follows, with one
source per line and items on the line separated by one or more spaces:
Identifier RA Dec Equinox/Epoch [Duration [Priority]]
e.g.:
m35 06:45:59.93 -20:45:15.1 j2000 7200s 5
(Epochs that can be used are:
J2000, B1950, GALACTIC, OTHER, etc.)
- Duration (Optional) Give the requested
observing time for this target in hours(h), minutes(m), or seconds(s).
Enter '0' if not used but you want to specify a priority.
- Priority
(Optional) The relative priority (1 = highest etc.) of the target
compared to your other targets. Targets can share the same priority. If
none is given, all targets are deemed equally important.
Which Queue ?
The JCMT Board have defined rules which determine how to
categorise each application.
Proposals should be sent 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.
Proposals sent to the wrong queue risk being rejected.
Submitting SERVICE Proposals
In general, SERVICE proposals may be submitted at any
time (no deadline) to the
UK or
Canadian queue
(but not to the International or Netherlands queues) for small, urgent, or
exploratory projects. The rules regarding what constitutes a SERVICE
project and how it is submitted are different for each queue:
Telescope Allocation Committee Policies
For your information, each national queue has its own telescope allocation
committee and policies:
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