3.6 Joint HST-NOAO Observing Proposals

By agreement with the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), STScI will be able to award time on NOAO facilities for highly ranked proposals that request time on both HST and NOAO telescopes. The award of time on NOAO facilities will be subject to approval by the NOAO Director, after nominal review by the NOAO TAC to avoid duplication of programs. The important additional criterion for the award of NOAO time is that both the HST and the ground-based data are required to meet the science goals of the project. It is not essential that the project requires simultaneous NOAO and HST observations. Under this agreement, NOAO time will only be awarded in conjunction with HST observations (and should not be proposed for in conjunction with an Archival Research or Theory Proposal). Major results from these programs would be credited to NOAO and HST.

NOAO has offered up to 5% of its available time to proposals meeting the stated criteria. NOAO observing time will be implemented during the two semesters from August 2007 through July 2008. Time cannot be requested for the preceding semester, 2007A. Time may be requested only for those facilities listed on the NOAO/NASA Collaboration Web Page. Under this agreement approximately 15-20 nights per telescope per year will be available on most telescopes, with the following exceptions: only 1-2 nights will be available on the MMT and HET, and no time will be available on Keck or Magellan. Note also that only a fraction of the time is available on some facilities - WIYN and the SMARTS telescopes - and so the 5% cap applies only to this fraction. In addition, time on the CCD Mosaic cameras or other heavily-subscribed resources may be limited by the NOAO Director.

Evaluation of the technical feasibility of the proposed ground-based observations is the responsibility of the observer, who should review the NOAO documentation or consult NOAO directly (see Section 9.4.3 for details). The proposal should include an explanation of how the requested observing allocation was calculated. If approved for NOAO time, the PI must submit, by 30 April 2007, an NOAO Phase II form giving detailed observing information appropriate to the particular NOAO telescope and instrument. In addition, for NOAO time on Gemini (only), successful PIs will be required to submit a full scientific justification to NOAO on the standard NOAO proposal form. This will be reviewed by the regular NOAO Time Allocation Committee in order to determine into which Gemini queue the observations will be placed.

NOAO will perform feasibility checks, and NOAO reserves the right to reject any approved observation determined to be infeasible, impossible to schedule, and/or dangerous to the telescopes or instruments. Any NOAO observations that prove infeasible or impossible could jeopardize the overall science program and may cause revocation of the corresponding HST time allocation.

Joint HST-NOAO Proposals must be identified in the 'Special Proposal Types' section of the proposal (see Section 8.10). Also, you must include technical information about the NOAO observations in the 'Coordinated Observations' section of the proposal (see Section 9.4.3).