Current Call for Proposals (2025A)

Previous Calls for Proposals

General Information

• Proposal Template (v 1.5.3, LaTeX)

Researchers at LDT Partner Institutions

Each partner institution has its own internal time allocation policy and committee.  If you would like to use LDT, you should request time through your institution, following your institutional guidelines.  All requests should include at least the proposal LaTeX cover page.

The LDT uses a LaTeX proposal template and style file.  Please download and use the latest version of the template (v 1.5.3, released on 2018Jan06) from github.  Partners are requested to have their users generate PDFs of this LaTeX form to submit their observing requests.  Partner observing requests should include the cover page information detailing the observing request; each partner may have a different policy on whether a Science Justification is required or page limits.

At minimum partner observing requests should include:

• A short, descriptive title
• The name(s) and email addresses of the investigators, with an indication of who is the primary contact
• The name(s) and email addresses of the likely observers and whether they have used the instrument(s) previously
  • As the time of the run approaches, it will be important to let us (the LDT staff) know who will actually be doing the observing, either on-site, or remotely
• What instrument(s) you want, including any supporting information, like what filters are needed, or what gratings
• How much time you would like/need
• What dates are optimal, acceptable, and unusable (use local MST dates when requesting specific nights)
• Preferred phase of the moon, if this is relevant to your observations
• Indicate if you would like to observe remotely, and if you are already checked out to do so

Partner requests should also clearly indicate the priority amongst their requests to guide scheduling decisions when/if conflicts arise.

Lowell Observatory Staff

All scientific staff of Lowell Observatory are eligible to apply for LDT time.  Incoming science staff are eligible to apply, even if the proposal deadline is before their start date.  Departing staff members are eligible to apply if the proposal deadline is before their departure date.

Lowell proposers should use the LaTeX template and style file (v 1.5.3, released on 2018Jan06) and email the PDF of their proposal to {tac at lowell dot edu}.  The internal TAC process for Lowell-based proposals is described in the Lowell TAC Guidelines.  As long as proposers respect the page limits, proposals may use the cover page(s) generated from the LaTeX template and PDF pages generated from elsewhere (e.g. Microsoft Word) to combine into a single PDF. Note that TAC members may not be experts in your sub-field and you should write to a non-specialist audience. Please do NOT reduce the font size.

LDT Scheduling

As of the start of 2018, LDT is scheduled on a semester basis.  Semesters align with the calendar year and run:

A:  January 1 - June 30
B:  July 1 - December 31

Lowell proposals & partner time requests are due by noon MST on the first business day of the month, two months before the semester starts:

A:  noon MST November 1 (or next business day if holiday/weekend)
B:  noon MST May 1 (or next business day if holiday/weekend)

The Call for Proposals will go out from Lowell approximately two to three weeks before the requests are due.  The request for instrument availability will go out to the instrument PIs four to six weeks before the requests are due so that that information can be folded into the Call for Proposals.

Each department will have its own internal schedule for proposals that may run ahead of these deadlines.  Once the department time allocation committees have met and drawn up their rank ordered lists of proposals, those should be submitted to the LDT Scheduler at {tac at lowell dot edu} according to the schedule above.  The current LDT Scheduler is Stephen Levine.

As needed, the partner scheduling representatives will be consulted to resolve conflicts among the requests.

The schedule for the semester will be published by one month before the start of the semester.

N.B:  Requests for remote observing CANNOT be confirmed for the entire semester at the semester start.  We will confirm roughly 6 weeks before the night(s) in question.