HST Call for Proposals and HST Primer for Cycle 24

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8.8	Scientific Category

Specify one Scientific Category from the list below. Please adhere to our definitions of these categories. If you find that your proposal fits into several categories, then select the one that you consider most appropriate. If you are submitting a Calibration Proposal, then choose the Scientific Category for which your proposed calibration will be most important.

•	SOLAR SYSTEM: This includes all objects belonging to the solar system (except the Sun and Mercury), such as planets, minor planets, comets, asteroids, planetary satellites, and Kuiper-belt objects.

•	EXTRASOLAR PLANETS AND PLANET FORMATION: This includes all objects belonging to known extrasolar planetary systems, and observations of their host stars, as well as all studies of circumstellar and proto-planetary disks.

•	STELLAR PHYSICS: This includes stars of all temperatures and evolutionary phases, including pre-main sequence stars, supernovae, pulsars, X-ray binaries, CVs, and planetary nebulae. It also applies to ISM and circumstellar matter in the Milky Way.

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STELLAR POPULATIONS: This includes resolved stellar populations in globular clusters, open clusters or associations, and the general field of the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies. Studies of color-magnitude diagrams, luminosity functions, initial-mass functions, internal dynamics and proper motions are in this category.

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GALAXIES: This includes studies of the initial mass function, stellar content and globular clusters in distant galaxies, galaxy morphology and the Hubble sequence, and low surface-brightness galaxies. Starbursts, IR-bright galaxies, dwarf galaxies, galaxy mergers and interactions may fall under this heading. This category also includes studies of gas distribution and dynamics in distant galaxies. Starbursts, IR-bright galaxies, dwarf galaxies, galaxy mergers, and interactions may also fall under this heading if the emphasis is on the ISM.

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MASSIVE BLACK HOLES AND THEIR HOSTS: This encompasses active galaxies and quasars, including both studies of the active phenomena themselves, and of the properties of the host galaxies that harbor AGNs and quasars. The definition of AGN is to be interpreted broadly; it includes Seyfert galaxies, BL Lac objects, radio galaxies, blazars, and LINERs.

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INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM AND COSMOLOGY: This includes the physical properties and evolution of absorption-line systems detected along the line of sight to quasars, and other observations of the diffuse IGM. It includes spectroscopy and imaging of damped Ly-alpha systems. This includes studies of the structure and properties of clusters and groups of galaxies, strong and weak gravitational lensing, galaxy evolution through observations of galaxies at intermediate and high redshifts (including for example, the Hubble Deep Fields), cosmology in general, the structure of the universe as a whole, cosmological parameters and the extra-galactic distance scale.

Proposals in these Scientific Categories will be reviewed by panels of the same names.