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Introduction

The 305-m William E. Gordon radio telescope at Arecibo is the largest single-dish radio telescope on our planet, and is available to the global scientific community for astronomical observations at wavelengths between 6 m and 3 cm (frequencies of 47 MHz to 10 GHz). Over the past few years it has contributed significantly to investigations of solar system bodies via radar imaging, the discovery and subsequent study of new pulsars, the use of binary pulsars as laboratories for general relativity, the measurement of celestial magnetic fields via the Zeeman effect, the large-area mapping of HI and continuum emission, the compiling of huge redshift surveys of galaxies, the detection of OH megamasers and other molecules in ultra-luminous infra-red galaxies, and much more besides. The study of a large number of molecular species (e.g. OH, CH, HCO, HCN, HCN, CHNH and CHOH) is now possible, the high end of the frequency range having been ``opened up'' by the Arecibo telescope upgrade of the mid-1990s. Additionally, appropriate instrumentation has allowed the telescope's participation in wide-band Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), adding enormously to the sensitivity of this endeavor for the imaging of the smallest scale structure in both line and continuum radio emitters. The Arecibo Telescope is a regular contributor to the HSA, EVN and Global VLBI Arrays, and participates in EVN eVLBI sessions.

With the arrival at the Observatory of the Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA) in mid-2004, an exciting new facility with wide user-community appeal was added to the telescope's receiver ensemble. ALFA is a seven-feed receiver system that allows large-scale surveys of the sky to be conducted with unprecedented sensitivity. In the past, use of the telescope as a survey instrument was limited by the relatively small field of view of its single-pixel receivers. ALFA, operating over the band 1225 - 1525 MHz, facilitates the making of deep surveys for a wide variety of Galactic and extragalactic investigations.

The present document is intended to provide an introduction to Arecibo Observatory and its 305-m telescope both for radio astronomers wishing to have an overview of telescope capabilities, etc., and for other interested parties wanting to know whether the instrument could be an appropriate tool with which to further their research. It also aims at informing potential new users concerning the procedures for obtaining observing time.

We note that, NAIC budget permitting, for U.S.-based scientists with a scheduled research program on the telescope, and able to show ``conditions of demonstrable hardship'', NAIC can contribute towards transportation costs associated with the conduct of their research program. The details and conditions of this are to be found at
http://www.naic.edu/~astro/proposals/proposal.shtml#11. (Travel support cannot be provided for investigators not based in the U.S.A. and its dependencies) On a similar basis, NAIC can contribute towards the publication costs of results from observations carried out at Arecibo. Details of this are at http://www.naic.edu/~astro/proposals/proposal.shtml#12.

In Section 2 of this document, we provide an introduction to the Observatory, the telescope and its instrumentation. Section 3 lays out how to compute expected sensitivities as required for justifying the time requirements in a proposal. Section 4 deals with VLBI use of the 305-m telescope, while Section 5 informs the potential user as to when and how to submit a telescope proposal, and elaborates on the proposal procedure. Section 6 provides general information and a list of contact addresses.