Proposals for IRAM Telescopes

The next deadline for submission of observing proposals on IRAM telescopes, both the interferometer and the 30m, is

March 4th, 2004 17:00h MET (UT + 1 hour)

The scheduling period extends from May 15, 2004 to Nov 15, 2004, covering roughly the summer period at our observatories.

Proposals should be submitted through our web-based submission facility. Instructions are found on our web page at URL:

http://www.iram.fr/GENERAL/
submission/submission.html

The submission facility will be opened about three weeks before the proposal deadline. Proposal form pages and the 30m time estimator are available now.

Please avoid last minute submissions when the network could temporarily be congested. As an insurance against network congestion or failure, we still accept, in well justified cases, proposals submitted by:

• fax to number: (33/0) 476 42 54 69 or by
• ordinary mail addressed to:
  IRAM Scientific Secretariat,
  300, rue de la Piscine,
  F-38406 St. Martin d'Hères, France

Proposals sent by e-mail are not accepted. Color plots will be printed/copied in grey scale. If the proposers want their color plots to be passed on to the program committee, the entire proposal must be sent in by ordinary mail in 12 copies.

Soon after the deadline the IRAM Scientific Secretariat sends an acknowledgement of receipt to the Principal Investigator of each proposal correctly received, together with the proposal registration number. To avoid the allocation of several numbers for the same proposal, send in your proposal only once. Note that the web facility allows cancellation and modification of proposals before the deadline. The facility also allows to view the proposal in its final form as it appears after re-compilation at IRAM. We urge proposers to make use of this facility as we always receive a number of proposals with serious formal defects (figures missing, blank pages, etc.).

Valid proposals contain the official cover page, up to two pages of text describing the scientific aims, and up to two more pages of figures, tables, and references. Proposals should not exceed these 5 pages of scientific material. Excepting the technical pages for the interferometer, longer proposals will be cut.

Proposals should be self-explanatory, clearly state the aims, and explain the need of the requested telescope. The amount of time requested should be carefully justified (see below).

The cover page, in postscript or in L^ATEX format, and the L^ATEX style file proposal.sty may be obtained from the IRAM web pages¹ at URL ../GENERAL/submission/proposal.html. In case of problems, contact the secretary, Cathy Berjaud (e-mail: berjaud@iram.fr). Please, make sure that your proposals use the current form pages. This is particularly important at the current deadline, since the style file has been modified at a number of places for facilitating a detailed computerized handling of the proposals.

In all cases, indicate on the proposal cover page whether your proposal is (or is not) a resubmission of a previously rejected proposal or a continuation of a previously accepted interferometer or 30m proposal. In both cases we request that the proposers describe very briefly in the introductory paragraph (automatically generated header ``Proposal history: '') why the proposal is being resubmitted (e.g. improved scientific justification) or is proposed to be continued (e.g. last observations wiped out by bad weather).

Do not use characters smaller than 11pt. This could render your proposal illegible when copied or faxed. If we notice any formal problems sufficiently before the deadline, we will make an effort to contact the principal investigator and solve the problem together.

Applications for zero spacing observations have been simplified. If the need for complementary 30m observations is evident already at the time when the PdB interferometer proposal is prepared, just note this need on the interferometer proposal. A separate proposal for the 30m telescope is not required anymore.

The blank form for Interferometer proposals now contains a new bullet, labelled ``zero spacing'' which should be checked if 30m observations are requested to fill in the missing zero spacings. The interferometer style file will prompt for an additional paragraph in which the scientific need for the zero spacings and all observational details, like size of map, sampling density and rms noise, spectral resolution, receiver configuration and time requested, are described.

R. Neri (neri@iram.fr) & C. Thum (thum@iram.fr)