[Everyone] [Lofar-proposals] Call for LOFAR Proposals: Cycle 20

Fri Feb 3 07:55:04 EST 2023

International LOFAR Telescope

Proposal Call to the Worldwide Community

NOTE: Proposal call covers 12 months

Cycle 20: 01 June 2023 - 31 May 2024

Submission deadline Wednesday 08 March 2023, 12 UT

Submission only via the online tool NorthStar<https://lofar.astron.nl/proposal>.

** Proposers must ensure their justification files adhere to the instructions given in Northstar, including restrictions on formats and proposal length, repeated online here<https://science.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar/observing-with-lofar/regular-proposals/instructions/#justification_file_prep>. **

12 MONTH PERIOD: This Cycle 20 proposal call will fill the entire 12-month period 01 June 2023 - 31 May 2024. After this “last full LOFAR1 observing window”, significant temporary impact is expected from LOFAR2.0 upgrade activities; in due course further announcements are envisaged for restricted observing opportunities until LOFAR2.0 operations commence. In order to optimize any and all science projects until 1 June 2024, Cycle 20 proposals may request any amount of observing time with any scheduling parameters (day/night, LST windows, calendar dates, etc.), and with the appropriate associated processing and data storage. It is imperative to list and justify minimum allocations, which will be taken as thresholds for scheduling. For reference: it is expected that 2750 hours of observing can be scheduled in Priority A, plus 3300 hours in Priority B (classes explained below). Proposals may entail continuation and follow-up of earlier work, or new projects, but must be observable entirely within the 12 month period of Cycle 20.

WORLD-WIDE ACCESS: Time on the ILT is available to scientists from the worldwide community. The time offered in this call is allocated in tandem between National Consortia and the ILT-PC. Scientific excellence and breadth as well as the technical strength of the proposals are taken along in the evaluations. The ILT-PC will define restricted data access rights (default period 1 year) based on the specific science goals and arguments in the proposal. Other groups may be allocated simultaneous access for different science.

RESOURCE AVAILABILITY:

LST availability: The availability of observing time as a function of LST is presented online<https://science.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar/observing-with-lofar/regular-proposals/upcoming-cycle/#lst_available>.

Station availability:  during Cycle 20, CS001 will remain a LOFAR2.0 test station and CS032 an IDOLS test station. Therefore, these will not participate to Cycle 20 observations. Two more NL Core stations will be upgraded during Cycle 20 for initial LOFAR2.0 testing, likely in January 2024. From that moment and for the remainder of the Cycle, these stations will not participate to production observations. These additional stations will be selected in the next few months. To help assess the feasibility of the projects and plan the Cycle 20 schedule, proposers should clearly specify in their proposal if and which stations they regard as essential for their projects.

Processing time and/or data storage capacity: These can be limiting resources. Each proposal must request processing time to match the observing time within appropriate documented ratios (see documentation online<https://science.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar/lofar-system-overview/observing-modes/>), or should justify how processing will proceed elsewhere.

Support staff effort required to support the proposed projects is considered during allocation. An online<https://support.astron.nl/support_estimator/> tool is available to understand whether a proposal entails a low, medium, or high support load of the Science Data Centre Operations staff. During the allocation process, the ILT-PC will be advised about the amounts of support effort requested and available, and these will be used as boundary conditions for proposal allocations; support will be treated as a scarce resource in the same way as has become customary on LOFAR for processing and data storage resources.  Advice is available online<https://science.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar/observing-with-lofar/regular-proposals/instructions/#support_load> on how proposers can reduce the support load of their project by a prudent choice of observing mode. The proposal may also indicate that the support will be carried out by members of the proposing team; in that case, both the expertise and the work plan must be carefully argued in the proposal.

Priority classes: Due to ongoing upgrade work, system availability and stability will vary with time. The ILT-PC will classify observing allocations as A and/or B priority time; roughly half in each. Allocations in A priority will have a high likelihood to yield a successful observation; in case such an observation suffers substantial failures, it will be repeated (once) at a later date. Allocations in priority B will likely be realized partially; they are carried out on a best-efforts basis, where the total of all priority B allocations requires an optimistic availability scenario.

SYSTEM CAPABILITIES: The ILT is a powerful radio telescope for frequencies below 240 MHz that offers state-of-the-art observing capabilities thanks to its phased-array technology with digital beam-forming. LOFAR delivers correlated visibility data for synthesis imaging, plus (in)coherently-added single and multiple station data (several beam-formed modes) as well as transient buffer read-out, for example for studies of pulsars, transients, and cosmic rays. LOFAR capabilities are described in detail online<https://science.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar/lofar-system-overview/technical-specification/>. The functionalities offered in Cycle 20 are described in this page<https://science.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar/observing-with-lofar/regular-proposals/upcoming-cycle/>. These have progressed since Cycle 19. Proposals should request only the available system observing modes and functionalities. If you are unsure about the validity of your desired setup, please contact the Science Data Centre Operations group through the Helpdesk<https://support.astron.nl/jira/servicedesk/customer/portal/7> by 22 February so it can be verified on time before the proposal deadline.

CO-OBSERVING OPTION FOR STANDARD HBA OR LBA IMAGING WITH LOFAR SKY SURVEYS: the possibility is offered to carry out imaging in co-observing mode with the LOFAR Survey projects, in their standard operating mode. This has the advantage for co-observing PIs that calibration and standard imaging are a routine process under guidance by the survey teams (see details online<https://science.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar/observing-with-lofar/regular-proposals/upcoming-cycle/#HBA_Co-observing>).

PILOT LINC PROJECT: The ILT is currently implementing in production LINC, the direction-independent calibration pipeline, which produces direction-independent calibrated visibilities and wide-band images of the target field, and diagnostic plots. Details about this pipeline, including its performance, are given online<https://science.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar/observing-with-lofar/regular-proposals/upcoming-cycle/#LINCpilot>. Currently, the pipeline in only available at HBA frequencies. While LINC cannot yet be widely offered in Cycle 20, we will select a sample of appropriate HBA projects that will be given the opportunity to obtain data products processed through this pipeline. In this respect, PIs who are interested in taking advantage of this option for the reduction of their data should clearly indicate that in the technical justification of their proposals.

FURTHER PROPOSAL REQUIREMENTS:

●      For all proposals, the technical case must argue both the optimal and the minimal required total amount of time and other resources (and any requirements on cadence or time span). If the stated minimum time or other requirements cannot be allocated, the proposal will not be carried out at all.

●      Proposals for multiple observations must list and argue the preferred priority order; this will be considered by the ILT-PC along with other factors in making (possibly partial) allocations.

●      Proposers are required to verify whether any relevant data are already available in the LOFAR Long Term Archive<https://lta.lofar.eu/>.

OBTAINING ADVICE: In view of the specialised and evolving character of the ILT, proposers are strongly urged to get in contact with Science Data Center Operations through the SDC Helpdesk<https://support.astron.nl/jira/servicedesk/customer/portal/7> well ahead of the deadline. Novice groups may wish to seek or request to be connected to suitable collaborators, and should also consider keeping the scope of initial projects modest while they become familiar with the complexities of data handling and analysis.

The Science Data Centre Operations group will explore the possibility for a few users unfamiliar with the reduction of LOFAR data to come to ASTRON (or have online interaction) for assistance with this. If this is desired, it must be specified in the proposal. Limited travel subsidies for eligible users can be supported through the Horizon-Europe ORP project. Further details are given online<https://science.astron.nl/telescopes/lofar/observing-with-lofar/regular-proposals/upcoming-cycle/#ORP_Transnational_access>.

Dr. R.C. Vermeulen

Director, International LOFAR Telescope

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