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17.3 Director's Discretionary Time
The NRAO has established two categories of proposals for Director's
Discretionary Time (DDT). DDT is limited to a maximum of 5% of the total
observing time on the VLBA. All DDT proposals should be submitted
using the standard NRAO procedures, using the on-line proposal tool.
Proposals submitted by any other means (e.g., phone calls, e-mails,
faxes, word-of-mouth) will be not be considered.
- Target of Opportunity. Target of Opportunity (ToO) proposals
are for unexpected or unpredicted phenomena such as supernovae in nearby
galaxies or extreme X-ray or radio flares. ToO Proposals are evaluated
rapidly, with scheduling done as quickly as possible and as warranted by
the nature of the transient phenomenon. ToO Proposals are evaluated on
the basis of scientific merit by the Chair of the relevant Science Review
Panel and Observatory staff with the necessary scientific expertise.
The technical feasibility of the proposed observations will be assessed
by Observatory staff. The proprietary period for data obtained by ToO
Proposals will be assessed on a case-by-case basis but will be no more
than six months.
- Exploratory Time. Exploratory Proposals are normally for
requests of small amounts of time, typically a few hours or less, in
response to a recent discovery, possibly to facilitate future submission
of a larger proposal. In general, there will not be a need for immediate
scheduling with these proposals, but they may need to be observed with
the VLBA without waiting for an entire proposal cycle. The possibility
that a proposer forgets about or misses a proposal deadline, or just
discovered that he/she was granted time for a particular source on
some other telescope, will not constitute sufficient justification for
granting observing time by this process. Thus, Exploratory Proposals
must include a clear description of why the proposal could not have been
submitted for normal review at a previous NRAO proposal deadline, and
why it should not wait for the next proposal deadline. Proposals for
exploratory time will be evaluated on the basis of scientific merit by
the relevant Science Review Panel. Observatory staff will assess their
technical feasibility. Notification of the disposition of an Exploratory
Proposal normally will be within three weeks of receipt of the proposal;
some of these proposals may be put in a queue such that they may or may
not be observed. The proprietary period for data obtained by Exploratory
Proposals normally will be six months.
Please see http://science.nrao.edu/observing/peta.shtml for
further information.
Next: 17.4 Student Support &
Up: 17 VLBA/HSA/EVN/GLOBAL PROPOSALS
Previous: 17.2 Large Proposals
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Jon Romney
2012-01-05