Available telescopes and instruments:
- Thirteen 1-meter telescopes, equipped with:
- Two 2-meter telescopes, equipped with:
- A Spectral imager and FLOYDS low-dispersion spectrograph (at Siding Spring Observatory),
- A MuSCAT3 multi-channel imager and FLOYDS spectrograph (at Haleakala Observatory).
- Ten smaller telescopes, a combination of
- 0.4-meter telescopes with Meade optical tubes and SBIG STL6303 cameras,
- Planewave DeltaRho 350 telescopes with QHY600 CMOS cameras.
In the 2023B semester, we estimate that approximately 50, 750, and 2000 hours will be available on the 2m, 1m, and 0.4m telescopes, respectively. During the 2023B semester, we will remove the Spectral imager from the 2-meter telescope at Siding Spring Observatory and install the MuSCAT4 multi-channel imager (a clone of MuSCAT3) in its place. We expect that the last month for Spectral will be October. Also, we will continue to replace 0.4-meter telescopes and SBIG cameras with Planewave DeltaRho 350 telescopes and QHY600 CMOS cameras. At the beginning of 2023B, we expect the network to be evenly split between 0m4+SBIG systems and DeltaRho+QHY600 systems.
For more information on LCO resources, check the links above or the links on the Observatory Information page.
For the 2023B semester, authors have the opportunity to submit long-term proposals. If a long-term proposal is ranked highly by the Review Committee, it may be awarded time for three consecutive semesters (2023B-2024B), at the discretion of the LCO director.
Eligibility:
This call is for LCO astronomers, as well as astronomers at institutions with which LCO has formal agreements, but without guarantees of Network time. Eligible institutions include the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), IPAC at Caltech, the University of Colorado, and the Astrobiology Center at the University of Tokyo. Astronomers who are part of the extended LCO science team are also welcome to submit proposals. Science team members include Time Allocation Committee members (for 2 years), Science Advisory Committee members (for 2 years), former LCO graduate students (for 3 years), and former LCO postdocs (for 5 years).
LCO's Science Collaboration partners that have guaranteed time conduct independent proposal solicitations and reviews.
Proposal Format:
The proposal body must conform to the following constraints:
- The Science and Technical Justification sections must not include an author list.
- The report on past LCO use and the list of related publications must begin on a separate page from the Justification sections.
- The font size must be 11 points or larger. (Caption fonts may be smaller.)
- Margins on all edges must be at least 1 inch.
- Line spacing must be no denser than 6 lines per inch.
- The file size must be under 10MB.
- The recommended length is 7 pages.
Additional Information
The Guidelines for Writing Proposals page provides information on
- registering in the Observatory portal,
- the fields that must be included in the proposal,
- instrument overheads and our time-charging policy,
- special observing modes,
- the Target Visibility Calculator and Exposure Time Calculator.