HST Proposal Opportunities and Science Policies
Articles in this section comprise the traditional Call for Proposals. These articles include information on observing and science policies, and details on the proposal submission process, including roadmaps.
Downloadable PDF collections of these articles are provided as a courtesy, made available and updated when feasible. The online documentation is the authority, and will be updated with the latest information.
Current HST Proposal Opportunities
Announcement
Release Notice: March 1, 2023
We are pleased to announce the Cycle 31 Call for Proposals for Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations and funding for archival research programs.
Participation in this program is open to all categories of organizations, both domestic and foreign, including educational institutions, profit and nonprofit organizations, NASA Centers, and other Government agencies.
Cycle 31 will extend from December 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024. We will accept proposals for the following instruments: ACS, COS, FGS, STIS, and WFC3.
We anticipate allocating up to 2300 orbits in this cycle. See Hubble Space Telescope Call for Proposals for Cycle 31 for further details.
This solicitation for proposals will be open through Wednesday May 24, 2023 at 8:00pm EDT. The Astronomer's Proposal Tool (APT), which is required for Phase I Proposal Submission, was made available for Cycle 31 Phase I use on February 23, 2023. Results of the selection will be announced by late August.
Questions can be addressed to the STScI HST Help Desk (https://hsthelp.stsci.edu).
The Cycle 31 Call for Proposals
The Call for Proposals (CP) invites the astronomical community to propose for observing time on HST in a given cycle (nominally one year in duration). It summarizes the policies and procedures for proposing in that cycle of HST observing, including requests for research funding on archival HST data. See Hubble Space Telescope Call for Proposals for Cycle 31 for more information.
The Hubble Space Telescope Primer for Cycle 31 provides an overview of the Hubble Space Telescope, with basic information about the telescope operations, instrument capabilities, and technical aspects of the proposal preparation process.
Late Breaking News
May 19, 2023:
- There was a typo in the text regarding AR program guidelines. Please note, any HST data that you wish to analyze must reside (or be expected to reside) in the Archive, and be released from exclusive access rights by the start of Cycle 31 (December 1, 2023). This restriction does not apply to the ULLYSES datasets.
May 8, 2023:
- There will be one Mid-Cycle opportunity in Cycle 31. The deadline for Mid-Cycle submissions will be Wednesday November 15, 2023 at 11:59pm. Notification of results are expected in mid-January 2024.
May 2, 2023:
- Proposers submitting combined GO-Archival proposals should use the GO template, and include the Analysis Plan section.
May 1, 2023:
- The ACS/SBC offers far-UV imaging with a low dark rate that historically varies from ~1E-5 to ~5E-5 cts/sec/pix during the course of a visit, as the detector temperature increases by ~10 degrees C for a visit spanning 5 orbits. Recently, the dark rate has been elevated by a factor of ~2, even though the temperature profile has not changed. This behavior is under investigation, but users considering the SBC for their observations should plan on shorter visits (1-2 orbits) to help mitigate this behavior, if it persists.
See also HST New and Important Features.
Science Justification Templates
Templates for HST Cycle 31 Proposal PDF attachments:
| Templates | LaTeX | Microsoft Word | output |
|---|---|---|---|
| GO | |||
| AR | |||
| GO/DD | |||
| GO Mid-Cycle |
Note: the Word and LaTeX templates have intentionally different margins, to accommodate the same amount of text per page. See HST Guidelines and Checklist for Phase I Proposal Preparation for information on page limits.
See HST Preparation of the PDF Attachment for more information.