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Director's Discretionary Time

clockApplications for Director's Discretionary Time (DDT) at the 3.5 m and 2.2 m Calar Alto Telescopes are invited. The goal of DDT allocation is to provide fast access to the telescopes in order to perform new and innovative science for which the regular scheduling procedures may be too slow or to supply critical but short observations for existing programs, which could not be obtained during regular observing runs. An average of 1.5 nights of DDT is available per month and per telescope, to be scheduled during Service Mode blocks.

 

Instruments for which DDT can be applied are preferably those ones mounted during the service blocks (see the current Schedule). Generally no additional instrument changes will be made. However, due to the flexible scheduling within the service blocks it cannot always be guaranteed that the desired instrument finally is available.

 
In order to apply for DDT a brief proposal should be prepared using the template provided. The proposal should contain a concise summary of the scientific justification and should not exceed some 20 lines of text. Time requested should not exceed 3 hours per single observation. DDT proposals should be submitted not later than 3 weeks before the desired scheduling of the observations.

 

Please check if data for the object(s) are available in the CAHA or ESO archives. If so, the need for new observations must be justified.

 

The proprietary period for the data is three months.

 

Programmes not approved as ToO by the TAC will not be approved as DDT by the director during the same semester.

 

Publications which result or which are partly based on observations carried out during DDT should be acknowledged as follows:
 
    1. First page, include the footnote: Based on observations collected at Centro Astronómico Hispano en Andalucía, Calar Alto, jointly operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) and Junta de Andalucía.
    2. Acknowledgements: We thank the Calar Alto Observatory for allocation of director's discretionary time to this programme (DDT.###.###)