- Introduction OPTICON is an international project involving more than 30 research institutions and enterprises, funded by the European Commission (EC) through the Research Infrastructure Programme under the Seven Framework Programme (FP7).
- Infrastructure and logistical support.
- The scientific and technical support usually provided to internal users.
- Travel and subsistence grants for one of the members of the research team. Additional grants are available under certain exceptional circunstances.
- Criteria of eligibility Criteria of eligibility of the astronomers who want to benefit from this Access Programme, are mainly based on the country of origin of the user group (as defined below), and the ownership of the telescope for which observing time is applied to (or country of the entity/ies responsible for its operation). These criteria shall apply to each telescope separately.
- User: means a researcher within a user group, including the user group leader.
- User group: means a research team of one or more researchers given access to the infrastructure under the project. Each user group is led by a user group leader.
- both the user group leader and the majority of the users must be working or studying in a Member or Associated State;
- both the user group leader and the majority of the users must be working or studying in a country other than the country(ies) where the legal entity(ies) operating the infrastructure is(are) established;
As part of the activities supported, observing time at 22 different medium-sized European telescopes is available to astronomers from EU Member States and Associated States. This Access Programme is expected to run from January 2009 to December 2012.
These user groups have to meet some criteria of eligibility.
New users, young researchers and users from countries with no similar research infrastructures, are specially encouraged to apply for EC time.
From semester 2010B the OPTICON Trans-National Access programme offers greater integration and coordination of the participating telescopes. As part of this new scheme, the funding for the programme is pooled, and the proposals for OPTICON time at all the telescopes is reviewed together by a single international Time Allocation Committee (TAC) to ensure network-wide competition and uniform review criteria.
User groups who are awarded observing time under this contract, following the selection procedures and meeting criteria of eligibility, will gain free access to the awarded telescope, including:
Since 22 medium-sized telescopes are offered under the contract, and they are operated by different legal entities, specific criteria of eligibility differ from one telescope to another. At the end of this section you will find a table on the definition of those eligible and non-eligible user groups for each telescope included in this Access Programme. We offer here the main general guidelines, however please for particular cases, check your interpretation of these with the aforementioned table.
Definitions:
To be eligible to benefit from access to the infrastructure under the contract, a user group must satisfy the following two EC conditions:
In addition, the Telescope Directors' Forum encourages those user groups having access by right to the facilities being applied to, to benefit from access outside the OPTICON Access Programme. This Programme is specially focused to award access to external users and in no case should a user be eligible for travel and subsistence support to access his/her own facility through this programme, even if he/she is a member of an eligible team as defined above.
Eligible user groups are invited to apply under this EC contract in response to the OPTICON Call for Proposals and using the Northstar proposal submission tool.
The prime consideration of this TAC in making awards is scientific merit and technical feasibility, taking into account the interests of the astronomical community as well as scientific output from previous time awards. Teams compete on the basis of equal opportunity. However, applications from new users, young researchers and users from countries with no similar research infrastructures are especially encouraged.
Those user groups:
1º awarded telescope time by these TACs,
2º meeting EC criteria of eligibility
3º and selected by the Telescope Operators for OPTICON
support
are directly informed by the Trans-national Access Office (responsible
for the management of this Programme, and located at Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes – Canary Islands, Spain) about this funding opportunity.
They will be informed about the free access they have been granted, as well as about the procedure to apply for travel and subsistence grants and how to get support for their observations.