During the summer period, priority will be given to technical activities. We plan to keep improving on the safety at the observatory, to progress on the construction of antenna 6, and to carry out in great detail the maintenance of the Plateau de Bure Interferometer.
All these technical activities will be time consuming and very demanding in terms of manpower. As a consequence, the interferometer will be left most of the summer time with 4 antennas.
Furthermore, scientific activities at the interferometer will need to run at lower pace between May and September. It is difficult to make accurate predictions as to how much time will finally be allocated to astronomical observations, but we are confident to get a good number of scientific observing requests scheduled before the end of the summer session.
Therefore we strongly encourage you to submit proposals that can be executed during the summer period. To keep the procedure as simple as possible, we ask you to focus on:
Proposers are invited to submit observing proposals for the Plateau de Bure Interferometer for the period May 15, 2001 to Nov 15, 2001. The deadline for applications is March 1st, 2001 18:00h (MET).
Details of the PdBI and the observing procedures are given in the document ``The Plateau de Bure Interferometer (PdBI)''. A copy can be obtained from the address below or from the World-Wide-Web at http://iram.fr/PDBI/bure.html). Proposers should read this document carefully before submitting any proposal.
Proposals may be submitted in one of the three following ways:
Do not use characters smaller than 11pt, which could make your proposal illegible when duplicated or faxed. For the same reasons, also avoid sending figures with grey scale maps by fax. In case your proposal reaches us in time, but is incomplete or unreadable when copied, we will try our best to contact you. The Principal Investigator will receive by return mail an acknowledgement of receipt and the proposal number.
Proposal templates as well as the Latex style file proposal.sty may be retrieved by anonymous ftp from server iram.fr (in directory dist/proposal); or from the IRAM web pages under the link http://iram.fr/proposal/proposal.html. In case of problems, contact the secretary, Mrs Cathy Berjaud (berjaud@iram.fr).
The scientific aims of the proposed programme should be explained in 2 pages of text maximum, plus up to two pages of figures, tables, and references. Proposals should be self-explanatory, clearly state their aims, and explain the need of the Plateau de Bure Interferometer.
In all cases, indicate on the first page whether your proposal is the resubmission of a proposal or the continuation of a previously accepted proposal. In case of a resubmission, state very briefly in the introduction why the proposal is being resubmitted (e.g. improved scientific justification, observational restrictions).
For this call for proposals, please note the following specificities (details on receivers, signal to noise, atmospheric phase compensation, observing modes, data reduction and local contact have not changed and can be found in the January 1999 issue of the IRAM Newsletter):
Only 4-antennas will be available during the summer period. The interferometer will mostly be arranged in compact, but non-standard configurations.
The new correlator has 8 independent units, each being tunable anywhere in the 110-680 MHz band, and providing 7 different modes of configuration (characterized in the following by couples of total bandwidth/number of channels). In the first 3 modes: 320MHz/128, 160MHz/256, 80MHz/512 the two central channels may be perturbed by the Gibbs phenomenon (depending on continuum strength) like in the old correlator. When using these modes, it is recommended to avoid centering the most important part of the lines in the middle of the band of the correlator unit. In the remaining modes: 160MHz/128, 80MHz/256, 40MHz/512 and 20MHz/512 the two central channels are not affected by the Gibbs phenomenon and, therefore, these modes should be preferred for spectroscopic studies. The 8 units can be independently placed either on the IF1 (3mm receiver) or on the IF2 (1.3mm receiver).