Call for Proposals

This document is also available in PDF format.

Semester S08B: August 1, 2008 -- January 31, 2009

Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Please refer to http://subarutelescope.org/Observing/index.html for the latest information.

1. INTRODUCTION AND PROPOSAL ACCEPTANCE POLICY

Subaru Telescope invites observing proposals for Semester S08B, which will run from August 1, 2008 until January 31, 2009. For S08B, the following instruments, Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS), High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS), Subaru Prime Focus Camera (Suprime-Cam), Infrared Camera and Spectrograph(IRCS), Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrometer (COMICS), the new Subaru AO188 system (only with IRCS), and Multi-Object Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (MOIRCS) will be available for open use by visiting observers (see also [note 1]).

[note 1] Those who intend to use carry-in instruments (i.e., other than those listed here) are required to make contact with the Director of the Subaru Observatory in advance as early as possible. Any "carry-in instrument" proposals without going through such a procedure (notification or negotiation beforehand) can not be accepted.

The Open Use programs in S08B consist of (1)Open Use Normal Programs, (2)Open Use Intensive Programs, and (3)Open Use Service Programs. As a rule, about 65% of total nights are assigned to the Open Use Programs.

See the appropriate web pages for descriptions and instructions for submitting your proposal either as an Intensive Program or a Service Program.

Table 1.    Important notice for Semester S08B
Opening of AO 188	The Subaru new AO system(AO188) using natural guide stars is available only in combination with IRCS. The mode of observations, the number of observing night and the number of proposal may be limited, since it is still under commissioning. Those who submit proposals using AO188+IRCS are required to make contact with the AO188 development team, Dr. Yutaka Hayano in advance.
CIAO Available as PI Instrument	In S08B, CIAOis still available as a PI instrument, but only without AO. Please be sure to make contact with the CIAO team, Dr. Miki Ishii in advance.
Time Exchange Programs with Gemini and Keck	According to the inter-observatory time-exchange agreement, we accept proposals of observations with Gemini; 5(or 6) nights GMOS (North) GMOS (South) NIFS (North) NIRI (North) T-ReCS (South) Altair (LGS/NGS-AO)(North) Keck; 4 nights for Keck II DEIMOS ESI OSIRIS NIRC2 NIRSPEC LGS-AO/NGS-AO(for OSIRIS or NIRC2) Keck; 0-2 nights for Keck I LRIS which will be screened by Subaru TAC within the framework of Subaru Call for Proposals. Please refer to Subaru/Gemini Time Exchange page and Subaru/Keck Time Exchange page for more details.
Necessity of Abstract also for Service Proposals	Regarding Service Proposals, we newly require that a brief abstract (ca. several lines) should be presented at the beginning of Scientific Justification.
Duplicated Submission Unallowable	An identical proposal using the same instrument/telescope should not be submitted twice at the same time by making use of the time-exchange opportunity. For example, if a proposal using Keck/Gemini was once submitted to Subaru time-exchange program, it should not be applied to the ordinary proposal selection on Keck/Gemini side at the same semester.(And vice versa.)
Indication of Moon-affected unacceptable dates	When one particular source or several sources whose coordinates are concentrated to a particular range are planned to observe in bright or grey nights, observations may be severely affected by the Moon in some particular nights. In such cases, those inconvenient or unacceptable dates should be explicitly indicated in Entry 10 (Schedule Requirements) of the proposal.
Notice for MOIRCS Applicants	(i)Due to a technical problem in the detector on channel-1, we are temporarily using an Engineering-grade chip. Though it will be replaced with a new science-grade detector as soon as it is available, its exact schedule has not yet been decided. For the latest information on the status of the detector, please check the MOIRCS website. (ii)If you are planning to observe in the MOS mode of MOIRCS, the number of required masks must be clearly specified at the beginning of Entry 11(Instrument Requirements) of your proposal.

Table 2.    Summary of three kinds of proposals
Normal Programs	Proposals which require less than or equal to 5 nights within a semester.
Intensive Programs	Proposals which require 6 nights or more with a maximum of 10 nights within a semester. And applicants can request a total of maximum 20 nights over several semesters (4 consecutive semesters at maximum from S08B to S10A).
Service Programs	Proposals which require at most 4 hours. All Service Program observations will be executed by the observatory staff. The observing method and technical details must be provided well in the proposal.

Table 3.    Other Important Notices
Service Programs	For Semester S08B, HDS, Suprime-Cam, and only imaging mode with IRCS (without AO188), COMICS, and MOIRCS will be available. Please see the web page. Submission of Service Program proposals should be made electronically as well as normal and intensive programs.
Remote Observation	Remote observations will be conducted from the Hilo Base Facility, and will be performed for IRCS(without AO), HDS, Suprime-Cam, CIAO, and MOIRCS(only imaging mode). If you wish to perform your observations remotely, please check the box in Entry 10 (Scheduling Requirements) of the Application Form. Note that your request may not be granted, depending on the instrument status and/or scheduling limitations.
Carry-in instruments	Proposers using carry-in instruments are requested to make formal contact with the Director of the Subaru Telescope well in advance.
Notice on Intensive programs	The PIs whose Intensive Proposals were accepted are recommended to devote to their Intensive proposals. So please note you may have some disadvantage as far as your accepted intensive program is running. Please refer to the Intensive program page for more details.
Influence of Computer Replacement	Owing to the entire replacement of computers controling observations (i.e., OBS, OWS, etc.) and data archives (STARS), some inconveniences may be expected for Subaru users. See here for more information.
Submission Address	The mailing address for electronic submission issince its change in S08A.
ToO Proposals	For Target of Opportunity (ToO) proposals, please read the ToO policy (Appendix A).
Allocation Policy	(i) Instrument changes are not permitted within a night. (ii)While observing time will in principle be awarded in units of 1 (whole) night for Normal Programs, you may request an allocation of half nights(i.e., in units of 0.5 night) if it is really sufficient for your intended purpose. It should be realized, however, that you might have disadvantages in this case, because difficulties are occasionally involved in scheduling half-night programs (i.e., we have to find another complimentary program that fills in the other half-night).

There are also some limitations in the schedule and operation of some instruments for Semester S08B, so please read this Call for Proposals carefully before submitting your proposals. Please also refer to the section 7 for the status reports of these instruments.

Although Subaru Telescope is entirely funded by the Japanese government, we also invite proposals from the international community. The actual number of nights to be allocated to international proposals (see [note 2]) will be determined by the time allocation committee. For the past semesters, about 10% of the available nights were allocated to such proposals. Non-Japanese researchers are encouraged to submit their proposals in collaboration with Japanese researchers.

[note 2] International proposals are defined as those submitted by non-Japanese principal investigators (PIs) belonging to non-Japanese institutions.

Any questions about Subaru Telescope Open Use, including proposal submission, should be addressed to . Please note this address has been changed from this semester.

2. OVERVIEW OF OPEN USE SCHEDULE

3. PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

From S05B semester, we accept only electronically submitted proposals. Applicants are requested to fill in LaTex source of the application form and make a PDF file describing the scientific justification; then both files should be sent to us by an e-mail.

The following explanations are intended mainly for those submitting the Normal/Intensive Program proposals. (Some more additional information concerning Intensive Program proposals is also available at the relevant page.)

Applicants of Service Program proposals should consult the specific instruction page, since there are several important points to be remarked.

3-1. Files to Be Prepared

3-1-1. Application Form

The template LaTeX file of the application form and the corresponding style file for this S08B semester are available from the Application form page .

After you have filled in this template LaTeX file (while following the instructions presented as comments in the template), please be sure to confirm that no LaTeX compiling errors are generated and there is no problem with the finally resulting application form. Although you can rename the LaTeX file as you wish, the extention of ".tex" must be kept in any case.

3-1-2. Scientific Justification

[note 3]A Jananese direct translation may be attached if wished, but please note:
We accept only faithful translation, i.e., neither supplement nor omission in its substance.
English scientific justification and Japanese scientific justification should be contained in the same PDF file, while the above-mentioned requirement for the file size equally applies.

3-2. How to Submit the Files

When the preparation has been finished, you should send your LaTex Application Form and your PDF scientific justification to the Proposal Management System, PROMS by e-mail with any subject name. Any of the following three cases will do:
  (1) mail body(LaTeX text file) + one attachment file(PDF file)
  (2) mail body(void) + two attachment files(LaTeX text file and PDF file)
  (3) mail body only(LaTeX text file and uuencoded text of the PDF file combined)

Please note that the PROMS address has been changed from the previous S08A semester. Please send your proposals to our e-mail address,

If your files have arrived at us, you should soon receive a reply mail, which may prompt you to check the contents of the submitted files on the web, or may request you to resubmit in case there is any trouble.

Unfortunately, however, there is no guarantee that our automatic processing system is compliant with all type of attached files sent from various mail programs (based on different file-encoding systems). Accordingly, if your trial of mailing files has ended up with an unsuccessful result, we would recommend you to adopt the following procedure(i.e., case(3) above) using the uuencode command of the UNIX system, which has been confirmed to work always successfully.

Suppose that your "*.tex" file for the application form and the ".pdf" file for the scientific justification are named as "appform.tex" and "scijust.pdf", respectively. Then in the UNIX machine (or that of analogous OS such as Linux, FreeBSD, cygwin, etc.), move to the directory where these files are placed, and execute as follows in the command line:

uuencode scijust.pdf scijust.pdf > scijust.txt
cat appform.tex scijust.txt | mail -s 'any_subject'

Then, the two files must have been correctly sent to
by a mail with a subject name of any_subject.

3-3. How to Revise or Cancel Your Submission

If you want to revise or cancel your submission, please refer to PROMS page.

4. HOW TO COMPLETE THE NORMAL AND INTENSIVE PROGRAM APPLICATION FORMS

4-1. Title of Proposal

Provide a short title for your proposal.

4-2. Principal Investigator

Provide contact details for the PI. The observatory will contact the PI if there are any questions regarding the proposal or observations.

4-3. Scientific Category

Please check one and only one valid category from the 18 listed. Each proposal will be reviewed by 5 referees who are experts in the appropriate category.

4-4. Abstract

Provide a clear and concise description of your proposed observations and their scientific importance.

4-5. Co-Investigators

List the names and affiliations of co-investigators. All potential observers should be enumerated here, since limited travel support may be provided (up to 3 persons per observing run of a proposal) for those researchers and graduate students (belonging to Japanese institutions) on this list . For this reason, information of relevant "individuals" should be specified here, and it is not allowed to replace it by the name of a team or group (e.g., COMICS team or SXDS team). You can append the "\CoI" field as many as you like if necessary. (In case that the number of these co-investigators is large,the names of some members may not appear on the formatted cover page. However, this does not have to be worried about, since our database is created from the original LaTeX source.)

4-6. List of Applicant's Related Publications

List (with full citation) publications over the last 5 years related to the proposal.

4-7. Title of Proposal

Duplicate the title of the proposal for technical reviewers.

4-8. Observing Run

List the instruments, requested and minimum acceptable number of nights, preferred and acceptable dates (e.g., "early Apr.-May"), lunar phase (Bright, Gray or Dark), and Observing Modes. Dark time is defined as being within 3 nights of the New Moon, and Bright time is within 3 nights of the Full Moon; Gray time is the remaining part of the lunar cycle. Applicants who request Dark time for infrared observations should justify its necessity in their scientific justification.

4-9. List of Targets

List all the proposed targets. J2000 is recommended for the equinox. Use an additional sheet if necessary. Please check the box if you do not want to expose your target names for the technical review by the support astronomer.

4-10. Scheduling Requirements

Please check the box if you want to carry out your observation remotely from the Hilo Base Facility, which can be done by uncommenting "\remoteobs" in the LaTeX form. And any other special scheduling requirements should be clearly explained here, especially if you request bright/grey nights and yet there are unacceptable dates affected by the Moon.

4-11. Instrument Requirements

If you are planning to observe in the MOS mode of MOIRCS, the number of required masks must be clearly specified here. Other specific or unusual instrument requirements should be explained here.

4-12. Experience

Describe your experience, ability, and need of any assistance, etc., for observing and data reduction in order for your support astronomer to better help you prepare and make observations.

4-13. Backup Proposal in Poor Conditions

Provide a short description of observations which will be carried out if conditions are not good enough for the main purpose (e.g., poor transparency). Please specify target names.

4-14. Observing Method and Technical Details

Describe your proposed observations. Please explicitly state the instrument configuration (filters, slit width, readout mode) and justify the time requested by describing the details of your proposed observations, with reference to the instrument sensitivities provided on the web site. Please give sufficient information so that the feasibility of the proposed observations can be confirmed, and so that support astronomers can prepare the observations if the proposal is accepted. If you propose AO observations, please describe the nature of the targets (extended or point source) as well as the guide star properties (separation, brightness, acceptable minimum Strehl ratio). Please read the following instrument notices carefully.

4-15. Condition of Closely-Related Past Observations

If your proposal is a continuation of (or inextricably related with) the previously accepted proposals, describe how the relevant past observations were carried out by giving the Open Use proposal ID, Title, Weather/Observational condition, Achievement rate [in %] for the planned outcome.
Additional remarks: (a) The proposals described here must be included also in the following "4-16 Post-Observational Status and Publications". (b) The reason why you request observational time in this semester (in spite of the past experience of Subaru observations on a similar/the same theme) has to be briefly described at the end of the "Scientific Justification" (e.g., bad weather/condition, telescope/instrument down time , expansion/improvement of the data, observing targets in different season).

4-16. Post-Observation Status and Publications

Report the status or outcome of your main Subaru Observations carried out in the past. All observations relevant to this proposal (e.g., those enumerated in 4-15) must be included here. Otherwise, only those within last 3 years suffice. Give the date, the Open Use proposal ID (e.g., S01B-999), PI's name, status of data reduction/analysis, and related publications.

4-17. Thesis Work

If the observations will form part of a graduate student's thesis project, please provide the student's name and thesis title.

4-18. Subaru Open Use Intensive Program

Only check this box if you are submitting an Intensive Program, that is if your are requesting 6 nights or more.

5. MEMBERS OF THE TIME ALLOCATION COMMITTEE

6. STATUS OF TELESCOPE

7. STATUS OF INSTRUMENTS

FOCAS, HDS, IRCS, Suprime-Cam, COMICS, and MOIRCS will be available for open use in Semester S08B. Applicants may refer to http://subarutelescope.org/Observing/Instruments/index.html for an overview of the current Subaru instruments. If you have any question, please contact the support astronomer (S.A.) in charge of each instrument.

7-1. IRCS

S.A. Dr. Tae-Soo Pyo

IRCS is available for imaging, grism spectroscopy and echelle spectroscopy on the Nasmyth platform without/with the AO 188 using natural guide stars. Note that the emissivities of thermal infrared bands (K-, L-, and M-bands) are 2 - 3 times higher than those on Cassegrain Focus before 2006. The sensitivities on IRCS instrument home page are already reflected these higher emissivities.

7-2. FOCAS

S.A. Dr. Takashi Hattori

FOCAS is available for imaging and long-slit spectroscopy. Linear/circular polarimetry are also available for both imaging polarimetry and spectropolarimetry.
Applicants interested in MOS observations must read the instructions at http://subarutelescope.org/Observing/Instruments/FOCAS/spec/mos.html.

From S07B, an order sorting filter and three VPH grisms are newly available. Please check the instrument home page.

A limited number of user filters may be accepted. If you wish to use your own filters, please contact Takashi Hattori for detailed information before submitting your proposal.

7-3. HDS

S.A. Dr. Akito Tajitsu

HDS is available for optical high-dispersion echelle spectroscopy. The signal to noise ratios and the spectral formats under your desired settings can be estimated with the HDS Exposure Time Calculator and the HDS Echelle Format Simulator on the web, respectively. An iodine-cell for precise radial velocity measurements is available.

Due to the earthquake in Oct. 2006, there was a significant damage in optical alignment of HDS. It has been completely recovered in Jan. 2007. Now, HDS is achieving its highest spectral resolution (R - 150,000 with 0".2 slit width) over the whole CCDs' surface. But, there is a little change in Echelle dispersion (stretching about 1.2%), compared with the spectral format before the earthquake.

A limited number of user filters for blocking unwanted orders in longslit mode may be accepted; please contact Akito Tajitsu for specifications before submitting your proposal. Please see the instrument web page for the currently available narrow-band filters for the longslit mode.

7-4. CISCO

CISCO and OHS are not available any more.

7-5. Suprime-Cam

S.A. Dr. Hisanori Furusawa

Suprime-Cam is offered for wide-field optical imaging.
Broad-band filters (Johnson-Cousins BVRcIc and SDSS g'r'i'z') and three narrow-band filters (NB711, NB816, and NB921) are offered for Open Use programs, but a limited number of user filters for Suprime-Cam may be accepted. If you wish to bring your own filters, please read the User filter acceptance policy on the Suprime-Cam web pages carefully and submit the required documents (the certificate of actual size measurement and inspection data of optical characteristics) to Hisanori Furusawa by April 30, 2008.

If the total number of filters requested in one observational run exceeds 10, we will not be able to accommodate all the filters in the filter stacker. Please refer to the filter operation policy for details.

Upgrade work of Suprime-Cam is planned in late S08A. Please see the instrument page for details.

7-6. CIAO

CIAO is available as a PI instrument, but only without AO. Please be sure to make contact with the CIAO team, Dr. Miki Ishii in advance.

7-7. COMICS

S.A. Dr. Takuya Fujiyoshi

COMICS is available for mid-infrared (8 to 25 μm) imaging and spectroscopy. Diffraction limited images can be obtained both in the N (10 μm) and Q (20μm) windows. In the N-band (8-13 μm), three modes of spectroscopy are available: low- (R~250), medium- (~2,500), and high-resolution (~10,000, in the vicinities of the 9.0 μm [Ar III], 10.5 μm [SIV], and 12.8 μm [Ne II] lines). Medium- (~2,500, 17-25 μm) and high resolution (~5,300, near 17 μm) spectroscopy are available in the Q-band. Please refer to the instrument web pages for details.

7-8. AO

The present AO system (AO36) is going to be decommissioned. Instead, the new AO (AO188) is available for IRCS under the risk-shared policy (such as less observing efficiency, restricted observing mode, and unexpected system failure).

The preliminary performance of AO188 is described in the AO www page. Please ensure that you provide sufficient details in Entry 14. "Observing Method and Technical Details" of your proposal. Applicants should describe the nature of the targets, namely whether they are extended or point sources, as well as the natural guide star properties such as separation to a target, brightness, and acceptable minimum Strehl ratio or FWHM. Extended objects cannot be used as guide stars. Non-sidereal objects cannot be used as wavefront reference. It is essential that you consider the important checkpoints listed on the AO web page.

7-9. MOIRCS

S.A. Dr. Ichi Tanaka

MOIRCS is available for wide-field imaging and multi-object(MOS)/long-slit spectroscopy. We are temporalily using an Engineering-grade chip for channel-1, due to a technical problem in the previous detector. Though it will be replaced with a new science-grade chip as soon as possible, its exact schedule has not yet been decided. For more details, please refer to the most recent information on the MOIRCS website.

For the imaging mode, YJHKs filters as well as some narrow-band filters are available (note that narrow-band filters are not available for service observations).

For spectroscopy two new high-resolution VPH grisms (R~3000) are to be open under the shared-risk policy. Those users who plan to use the VPH grisms are required to have sufficient knowledge of their characters (wavelength coverage, positional dependence of peak throuput wavelength, and so on) through the information on the relevant page in MOIRCS website. Please explicitly explain that your objects can be observed under the current specification of grisms in Entry 14 (Observing Method and Technical Details) of the proposal. It is preferred that the setting of the observing proposal may be flexibly adjusted according to the change of specification, so that a better throughout may be gained by an additional tunning of the VPH setting. In addition, please explicitly describe the alternative or substitute plan in case where VPH is unavailable. The number of accepted proposals using VPH may be limited during S08B. Please read carefully the related information on MOIRCS website.

For MOS mode the number of MOS masks for use should be less than 13 during one contiguous observing run. Proposers planning to use the MOS mode must explicitly describe the number of MOS masks you need. Please refer to the instrument web page for details.

8. DATA RIGHTS AND ARCHIVING

Successful applicants will have exclusive access to their data for a period of 18 months from the time of observation, after which the data will be freely available from the Subaru archive. Applicants may request an extension to this proprietary period in their Scientific Justification, but such an extension will only be awarded in exceptional circumstances.

9. NOTES FOR PUBLICATION FROM SUBARU TELESCOPE

We hope that the data you will obtain with Subaru telescope will achieve its intended science goals. We ask all the Open Use observers to follow the Subaru Telescope acknowledgment policy. All papers which make use of data taken with Subaru Telescope facilities should include the following acknowledgment on the title page as a footnote to the title.

Based [in part] on data collected at Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

We encourage you to release your results obtained from Subaru Open Use to the general public for astronomical educational and outreach purposes through NAOJ. Please refer to the Subaru Web site (http://subarutelescope.org/Observing/Proposals/Publish/index.html) for details.


APPENDIX A: TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY (ToO) POLICY

Applicants may submit proposals for Target of Opportunity (ToO) observations of transient and/or rare phenomena with specific objects and clear observational strategy, such as nearby supernovae, Gamma-Ray Burst follow-up, etc. Proposals should be submitted in the same manner as normal Open Use proposals, described above, making it clear which Subaru instruments can be used to perform the ToO observations and how much time will be required. In addition, all ToO proposals must include at least one member of Subaru Telescope (Hawaii) staff as a Co-I.

In addition, the Director may override scheduled observations to execute ToO observations as an observatory program should an important unexpected celestial event occur. Subaru Telescope will make every effort to compensate observers for time lost due to ToO observations.