The latest call for proposals for telescopes supported by the OPTICON Trans-National Access programme for semester 2020A has just been released. The LT is one of the telescopes in this programme, and complete instructions on how to apply to OPTICON for time on the LT are given in the relevant parts of the call, presented below:
Ladies and Gentlemen
We are pleased to announce that the call for observing time telescopes supported by the OPTICON Trans-National Access (TNA) programme is now open. See https://www.astro-opticon.org/h2020/tna/call/call-2020a.html
The call will close on 25 August 2019 at 23.59UT.
THIS IS A FEW DAYS EARLIER THAN USUAL!
The Horizon 2020 contract includes several robotic telescopes, a requirement to support time domain astronomy which is defined as a science category in its own right and some changes to the rules on applicant nationalities. We have also tried to define which facilities are best able to support various kinds of overrides, monitoring and time critical observations. Please review the web-page notes carefully, even if you have used the TNA programme before.
The semester is centred on March 2020 to August 2020, but there are small variations at some telescopes to accommodate their normal semesters and maximise scheduling flexibility. Note that technical support for the submission software is not provided out-of-hours and late applications will not be accepted, so please complete your application in plenty of time. In recent semesters we have received between 50-60 proposals and allocated about 15 projects per semester. This semester we may allocate time to a few more as the present contract will finish at the end of 2020. We do however expect to issue a call for 2020B.
Many of you will be aware of the political situation regarding the UK's decision to leave the EU. We do not expect this to affect the present call or to limit our usual travel support for approved users.
Good Luck
John Davies
OPTICON Project Scientist
