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Basic Science

The Basic Science draft Call for Proposals is now available. The program elements for this phase of SOFIA observations are in place; we are soliciting comments from the community on the Call for Proposals document. Our goal is to make the document as clear and helpful as possible for astronomers interested in observing with SOFIA. Please send us your comments by email before February 27, 2009.

The final Call for Proposals will be released during the summer of 2009. The deadline for submitting proposals will be two months after the final release. The selected proposals will be announced approximately three months after the deadline, following technical and scientific peer reviews. Basic Science observations will be carried out in summer 2010.

Please bookmark this page, and check back for schedule details.

Reserved target lists for each of the instruments will be made available as soon as possible, and definitely before the final Call for Proposals is released.

A special session, "Proposing for SOFIA Basic Science Observations" was held at the January 2009 AAS meeting in Long Beach. The presentations from this session are available here.

Download the Basic Science draft Call for Proposals.

Instruments

For Basic Science, two instruments will be available: FORCAST, a mid-IR camera operating in the 5-40 micron range and GREAT, a heterodyne spectrometer operating in the 60-200 micron range. These instruments are described in detail in the "1st Generation Instrument" pages. However, the instrument capabilities available for Basic Science and all details relevant to the proposal call are to be found in the pages linked below.

FORCAST

GREAT

Proposal Tools, Tutorials, and other Documents

SOFIA Proposal Tool (SPT)

All proposals are to be prepared using the SOFIA Proposal Tool (SPT), which is based on the Astronomer's Proposal Tool (APT) used for Hubble Space Telescope proposals. The proposal ingest will become operational along with the final Call for Proposals release.

SPT is fairly intuitive to use, and we encourage those interested in proposing for Basic Science to download the tool and try it out. Please feel free to send us feedback. Detailed instructions will become available by the end of June, 2009.

Download SPT (Note: ignore the username/password boxes at the top of the page.)

SOFIA Instrument Time Estimator (SITE)

The exposure times for proposed FORCAST observations should be estimated using using the on-line calculator, SITE. (Note: ignore the username/password boxes at the top of the page.)

GREAT tutorial

The recipe for estimating exposure times for proposed GREAT observations are included in a tutorial.

In order to calculate exposure times for observations using GREAT, it is necessary to know the atmospheric transmission as a function of wavelength. This may be done using the on-line tool, ATRAN, which will be made available before the final release of the Call for Proposals.

Target Visibility Tool

The target visibility for SOFIA can be determined using the on-line Target Visibility Tool. Instructions on using the tool are available by clicking the "Help" or "?" icon on the top left of the applet. The Call for Proposals will contain details such as the permissible target elevations and flight times. (Note: ignore the username/password boxes at the top of the page.)

The on-line Target Visibility tool is a beta release, see the VT Release Notes for a list of known issues.

"Proceedings of the SPIE" article on SOFIA

"The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA)" (Gehrz & Becklin 2008) contains information about the telescope and the mission, which could be useful for proposers.

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Page Last Updated: April 17, 2009