Subaru Open Use Policy

1. Three Types of Open Use Program

There are three kinds of Open Use programs, depending on the requested telescope time

• up to 4 hours: Service Program
• up to 5 nights: Normal Program
• 6 nights or more: Intensive Program.

Normal Program

Normal Program is for observing proposals which require less than or equal to 5 nights within a semester. Applicants who apply to Normal Program should follow the instructions at How to Submit?.

Intensive Program

Intensive Program is for observing proposals requiring more than 5 nights (up to 10 nights) within a semester. Besides, applicants can request a total of maximum 20 nights over several semesters (4 consecutive semesters at maximum).

The Intensive Program provides an opportunity for researchers to proceed with such large programs of advanced study that can only be achieved with (1) the unique capability of Subaru Telescope as well as its instruments and (2) an allocation of significant telescope time. Applicants who apply to Intensive Program should follow the specific instructions at the intensive webpage as well as How to Submit?.

Service Program

Service Program provides an opportunity to execute effectively many short programs that do not require a full night of observing time to achieve good scientific results. Each proposed Service Program must be completed within 4 hours in a single night, including all the required "open-dome" calibrations and overheads.

All Service Program observations will be executed by the Support Scientists. The observing method and technical details must be well described in the proposal. Applicants who apply to Service Program should follow the specific instructions at the service webpage as well as How to Submit?.

Appendix: ToO Proposals

Applicants may submit proposals for Target of Opportunity (ToO) observations of transient and/or rare phenomena with specific or non-specific objects based on clear observational strategy, such as nearby supernovae, Gamma-Ray Burst follow-up, etc. Proposals should be submitted in the same manner as Normal Program proposals, while clarifying 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.

You may also submit ToO proposals (excluding GRB observations) to the time-exchange program with Gemini, which will be excuted at queue mode. Please refer to Subaru/Gemini page for more details.

2. Semesters

Subaru Telescope calls for proposals from astronomical researchers worldwide twice a year, which we call Semester A and Semester B(see the time table below). There are three kinds of programs for Subaru Open Use: Normal Program, Intensive Program and Service Program. The submission deadline of Service Program is about one month after that of Normal/Intensive Program. Please pay attention to the specific deadline date for each semester which is announced in Call for Proposals.

	A semester	B semester
Opening of Call for Proposals	around August 10	around February 10
Normal/Intensive Program Deadline	around September 10	around March 10
Service Program Deadline	around October 10	around April 10
Refereeing	October	April
Time Allocation Committee	early November	early May
Scheduling	November	May
Opening of the Selection Result	early December	early June
Start of the Semester	February 1	August 1

3. Instruments

The following instruments are available for Subaru Open Use (as of S12B).

• Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrometer (COMICS)
• Fiber Multi Object Spectrograph (FMOS)
• Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS)
• High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS)
• Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (IRCS)
• Multi-Object Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (MOIRCS)
• Subaru Prime Focus Camera (Suprime-Cam)
• Subaru AO188 system (only with IRCS or HiCIAO)

• COMICS: Dr. Takuya Fujiyoshi
• FMOS: Dr. Kentaro Aoki
• FOCAS: Dr. Takashi Hattori
• HDS: Dr. Akito Tajitsu
• IRCS: Dr. Tae-Soo Pyo
• MOIRCS: Dr. Ichi Tanaka
• Suprime-Cam: Dr. Fumiaki Nakata
• AO188: Dr. Yosuke Minowa

Those who intend to use the PI instruments, such as HiCIAO or Kyoto3DII, should make contact with the instrument team in advance. The correspondence address for HiCIAO is , while that for Kyoto3DII is .

Applicants can also submit proposals using carry-in instruments of their own. Those who intend to use such specific instruments 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 latest telescope performance can be found at the Telescope webpage. If you have any questions related to the telescope, please contact Dr. Daigo Tomono .

4. Criteria for the Evaluation of Proposals

Subaru Time Allocation Committee decides which proposals to accept, while consulting reviewers' assessments; e.g., in terms of the following criteria.

• Scientific importance/Originality
• Clarity of scientific justification
• Feasibility to achieve the proposed goal
• Use of telescope capability

Members of the Time Allocation Committee

5. Allocation policy

About 65% of total nights will be assigned to Open Use Proposals. Although Subaru Telescope is entirely funded by the Japanese government, we also invite proposals from the international community. Limited number of nights are available for such international proposals (see [note 1]). Non-Japanese researchers are encouraged to submit their proposals in collaboration with Japanese researchers.
[note 1] International proposals are defined as those submitted by non-Japanese principal investigators (PIs) belonging to non-Japanese institutions.

Instrument changes are not permitted within a night. 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 of the difficulties involved in scheduling half-night programs (i.e., we have to find another complimentary program that fills in the other half-night).

6. ToO policy

The Director may override scheduled observations to execute ToO(Target of Opportunity) observations as an observatory program, in case that an important unexpected celestial event occurs. Subaru Telescope will make every effort to compensate observers for time lost due to ToO observations.

7. Restrictions

An identical proposal of the same science/targets using the same instrument/telescope should not be submitted twice at the same time through different TAC processes. 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.)

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 made open to the public as the Subaru archival database. Applicants may request an extension to this proprietary period in their Scientific Justification, but such an extension will only be approved under exceptional circumstances.

9. Publication

After you have achieved intended scientific goals with the data obtained with Subaru Telescope, we encourage you to publish your results and release them to the general public for outreach purposes through NAOJ. Please refer to our publication webpage for details.