Available telescopes and instruments:
- Thirteen 1-meter telescopes, equipped with:
- Two 2-meter telescopes, equipped with:
- Ten smaller telescopes, a combination of
- Planewave DeltaRho 350 telescopes with QHY600 CMOS cameras.
- 0.4-meter telescopes with Meade optical tubes and SBIG STL6303 cameras.
In the 2024A semester, we estimate that approximately 50, 1000, and 1000 hours will be available on the 2m, 1m, and 0.4m telescopes, respectively. During the first half of the 2024A semester, we expect to complete the installation of the Planewave DeltaRho 350 telescopes and QHY600 CMOS cameras. These telescopes/cameras replace the 0.4-meter Meade optical tubes and SBIG cameras. At the beginning of 2024A, we expect the network will comprise 8 DeltaRho+QHY600 systems and 2 0m4+SBIG systems.
For more information on LCO resources, check the links above or the links on the Observatory Information page.
For the 2024A 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 (2024A-2025A), at the discretion of the LCO director.
For LCO investigators also applying for SWIFT time related to their LCO proposal: the separate SWIFT and LCO Review Committees are meeting close enough in time that they can consult on highly ranked proposals requesting time on both observatories prior to making the final selections.
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.
- Citations to publications should be numbered in sequential order in the proposal text. Later citations to the same publication should repeat the original number.
- The list of references (in number order), 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.