Support to JWST GO Observing Proposals
The first call for proposals for regular GO time is planned for the end of 2019. In order to help the extragalactic deep fields community prepare for the upcoming opportunities, the SNO team offers support for two major aspects of proposal preparation and submission. With a science case in mind, the SNO team will help determine the feasability with JWST, the appropriate instrument and configuration, the required exposure time, and to build the final submission file.
Exposure Time Jutification
To either assess the feasibility of planned observations or to estimate the total exposure time required to achieve the science goals of the proposal the JWST ETC can perform various calculations on the four available instruments. The ETC uses workbooks that allow the user to define scenes, which can be populated with a variety of sources. The user can configure the source properties directly in the ETC or upload spectral templates or observations. Such scenes can then be used for calculations using the planned instrument configuration. The SNO spport team can help in running these calculations based on the intitial information provided by the user. Such a request can be submitted by email to Help Desk. The request should contain the following informations:
- The source properties: the type and size, redshift, magnitude, emission line fluxes, or a flux calibrated spectrum.
- The required SNR in the continuum and/or the emission line
- instrument choice and configuration, including filter set, spectral coverage and resolution.
Astronomer's Proposal Tool
Just like HST, the APT must be used to prepare and submit JWST proposals. It handles the observing templates for each instrument using the exposure times calculated with the ETC. It allows the user to define the best observing strategy following scheduling requirements based on the target visibility tool and the Visit Planner. The intergrated Aladin Tool also provides useful visualisations of the planned observations. the request should be emailed to Help Desk which will provide an APT file that the user can complete with the science justification text and invetigators list. The following information should be included in the request:
- Target coordinates and scheduling constraints
- Instrument configuration and exposure time (if an ETC help request was not submitted)