ARECIBO PROPOSAL DEADLINE, MARCH 1st, 2012

The new management of Arecibo Observatory have recently sanctioned a move to a semester schedule for telescope proposal deadlines. In future these deadlines will be on or about March 1st and September 1st each year. Proposals will still be evaluated during a 4-month period following each deadline. Approved proposals will remain active and eligible for scheduling under the same rules as currently, (i.e. A-graded proposals indefinitely, B-graded for the next 8 months).

Due to the transition to a semester cycle, the proposal call for submissions due March 1, 2012, presents a special case. To avoid any shortage of active observing programs of high merit during the month of July 2012, the evaluation period for the March 1, 2012, deadline will be accelerated and completed in three months rather than four; B-graded proposals from this will be active for nine months instead of eight (i.e. until March 1, 2013). We hence remind Mar 1, 2012, proposers of the need, should it be relevant, to plan for an extra month of potential observing.

The new semester-based schedule offers several advantages including reduced burden on the Observatory staff and alignment (with a one-month delay) with the new semester-based cycle at NRAO.

ARECIBO CALL FOR PROPOSALS

We invite Arecibo telescope proposals for the Thursday, 1st March 2012, (23:59 EST), deadline. These requests should be for telescope usage within the nine months beginning 1st June 2012.

Latest news with relevance to the above deadline

For the March 1st deadline, we particularly note the availability of the new Arecibo PUPPI (Puerto Rico Ultimate Pulsar Processing Instrument) pulsar backend. This will be available in shared risk mode to expert users of the GUPPI backend at the GBT. We expect that by the following (September 1st) deadline, PUPPI will be fully integrated into the Arecibo observing software, and non-expert users will be encouraged to apply.

Technical information (including for PUPPI) that could be of use to prospective Arecibo proposers can be found at;

Technical information for Arecibo proposers.

Web Coversheet Form

Remember to also separately email a PDF of the main body of your proposal to proposal@naic.edu.