AO-17 - INTEGRAL

17th Announcement of Opportunity (AO-17)

This Announcement solicits proposals for observations to be carried out in the period from January to December 2020.

Release of AO-17: Call for observing time proposals		25 February 2019
Deadline for submission of observing time proposals		5 April 2019 (14:00 CEST)
Meeting of the Time Allocation Committee (TAC)		13-15 May 2019
Start AO-17 cycle of observation (duration 12 months)		1 January 2020

Please take note of the following points:

ESA provides the opportunity to propose for coordinated observations with XMM-Newton, NASA's NuSTAR telescope and/or NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory with a total of 300 ks, 100 ks and 150 ks, respectively, of their available time. Note that through an agreement with ESA, the Fermi project of NASA offers the possibility to obtain observing time with INTEGRAL through a single proposal to NASA via the Fermi AO.

Following a recommendation by the IUG, the time for execution of TOO observations is set to 3 Ms. This is allocated for long-term planning before the start of the AO. More time may be allocated to TOO observations during the execution of the AO if justified on the basis of scientific merit.

The INTEGRAL Project has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the IceCube Collaboration, and Letters of Intent (LoIs) with the deep-sea neutrino telescope ANTARES and the SUPERB Project to participate in follow-up campaigns of ultra high energy neutrino events, and fast radio bursts. It is important to note that it is not possible to propose for time bound by these MoUs/LoIs.

It is possible to submit Key Programme proposals with observations spanning two AO cycles.

The rectangular dithering on a 5x5 grid is the standard observation pattern. In a few cases a hexagonal pattern is allowed. Observations with custom patterns are strongly discouraged. They will be considered only for A-grade proposals, and their scheduling will be on best-effort basis.

Data or science rights to the targets or science in the field of view (FOV) of the instruments will be allocated to PIs of accepted proposals with a 1-year proprietary period. If the PI is from a country other than the Russian Federation, the rest of the field will be made public immediately. Proposals where the PI is from the Russian Federation follow a similar kind of policy, except that the rest of the field will be made public only through the consolidated data programme. The Russian Federation scientists currently working at Russian Federation scientific institutes still have exceptional access to the near-real time data of the rest of the field.

To help in the writing of your proposals, we encourage you to use this LaTeX template, and refer to this checklist.