1.3 General Guidelines for Proposal Preparation
Here are some suggestions to keep in mind when writing your proposal.
- Stress why your science is critically important and why it requires HST.
- Write for the appropriate audience.
Review panels span a broad range of scientific expertise. It is therefore crucial that your proposal provides sufficient introductory material for the non-specialist, and explains the importance of the program to astronomy in general.
- Explain clearly and coherently what you want to do and why.
Make sure to get your point across to reviewers who have to judge on order of 100 proposals in a finite amount of time.
- If you have a project that requires a significant investment of HST observing time, do not hesitate to propose it.
STScI strongly encourages the submission of larger proposals. In recent cycles, the proposal acceptance rate (about 1 in 5) has been approximately independent of proposal size. So the odds of getting a sizeable proposal accepted are no worse than for a small proposal.
- Make sure that what you propose is feasible.
It is the responsibility of the proposer to insure that the proposed observations are technically feasible; proposals that are not technically feasible will be rejected. So familiarize yourself with the technical documentation provided by STScI. In particular, make sure that your observations do not exceed Bright Object Safety limits (see Section 5.1 of the HST Primer). Contact the STScI Help Desk (see Section 1.5) if anything is not clear, or if you are unsure about the feasibility of a particular approach or observation.
