• Long-Term Proposals should provide summary information for the entire program, with a cycle-by-cycle breakdown of the requested orbits.
• Treasury Proposals should discuss the data products that will be made available to the community, the method of dissemination, and a realistic time line. It is a requirement of Treasury Programs that data products be delivered to STScI in suitable digital formats for further dissemination via the HST Data Archive or related channels. Any required technical support from STScI and associated costs should be described in detail.
• Investigators submitting Large or Treasury Proposals should discuss how they have designed their program with regard to schedulability.
• Proposers of programs with timing constraints and timing relationships between observations should describe those constraints, including allowable flexibility.
• Proposers of programs containing large blocks of orbits at constrained orientation angles, such as mosaics and surveys, should describe those constraints and allowable flexibility.
• Calibration Proposals should present a detailed justification of how they will achieve the goals of the program, and if applicable, a description of the conditions under which these goals will be achieved.
• Calibration Proposals should discuss what documentation, and data products and/or software will be made available to STScI to support future observing programs.

Special Requirements

(This item is required for GO and SNAP proposals, and proposals under the JWST Initiative)

All visit-level and exposure-level special requirements must be itemized and justified in the Phase I proposal, including:

• For Target-of-Opportunity (ToO) observations, estimate the probability of occurrence during Cycle 27, specify whether long-term status is requested, identify whether the ToOs are disruptive or non-disruptive, and state clearly how soon HST must begin observing after the formal activation.
• CVZ observations.
• Time-critical observations.
• Early acquisition observations.
• Coordinated Parallel observations.
• Target acquisitions that use offsets.
• Scheduling of STIS/MAMA and STIS/CCD observations (other than target acquisitions) in the same visit.
• Requests for expedited data access.
• Other special scheduling requirements (e.g., requests for non-SAA impacted observations, roll-angle constraints, etc.).
• For observations in support of another NASA mission, proposers should identify the mission, describe how the HST observations complement the core mission science and indicate whether any coordination is required.

If applicable, discuss the need for a non-default proprietary period request.

Proposals identified as JWST Initiative must describe the connection with specific future JWST observations.

If your proposal (either GO or AR) uses a mixture of UV and optical/IR observations and you wish to claim the benefit of the UV Initiative, justify why the UV component of your proposal is essential to the science investigation.

Coordinated Observations

(This item is required only for GO Proposals)

If you have plans for conducting coordinated observations with other facilities that affect the HST scheduling, please describe them here (examples are coordinated or simultaneous observations with other spacecraft or ground-based observatories). Describe how those observations will affect the scheduling.

If you have plans for supporting observations that do not affect HST scheduling, then do not describe them here. If they improve your science case, then describe them in the ‘Scientific Justification’ section of the proposal.

Joint HST-Chandra Observations

Proposers requesting joint HST-Chandra observations must provide a full and comprehensive technical justification for the Chandra portion of their program. This justification must include:

• the choice of instrument (and grating, if used),
• the requested exposure time, justification for the exposure time, target count rate(s) and assumptions made in its determination,
• information on whether the observations are time-critical; indicate whether the observations must be coordinated in a way that affects the scheduling (of either Chandra or HST observations),
• the exposure mode and chip selection (ACIS) or instrument configuration (HRC),
• information about nearby bright sources that may lie in the field of view,
• a demonstration that telemetry limits will not be violated,
• a description of how pile-up effects will be minimized (ACIS only).

Proposers should note the current restrictions on observing time as a function of pitch angle of the satellite. Refer to Section 3.3.3 of the Chandra Proposers’ Observatory Guide for detailed information. Proposers should check the pitch angles of their targets and be sure that any constraints they request do not render the proposed observation infeasible.

Technical documentation about Chandra is available from the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) webpage, which also provides access to the Chandra Help Desk. The primary document is the Proposer’s Observatory Guide, available from the Chandra Proposal Information webpage. Full specification of approved observations will be requested during the Chandra Cycle 21 period when detailed feasibility checks will be made.

Joint HST/XMM-Newton Observations

Proposers requesting joint HST/XMM-Newton observations must provide a full and comprehensive technical justification for the XMM-Newton portion of their program, including

• the choice of prime instrument,
• the requested exposure time, justification for the exposure time, target count rates, and assumptions made in their determination,
• information on whether the observations are time-critical.

Technical documentation about XMM-Newton is available from the XMM-Newton webpage.

Joint HST-NOAO Observations

Proposers requesting joint HST-NOAO observations must provide a full and comprehensive scientific and technical justification for the NOAO portion of their program, including:

• the telescope(s) and instrument(s) on which time is requested,
• the requested observing time per telescope/instrument, a specification of the number of nights for each semester during which time will be required, a breakdown into dark, grey and bright time, and an explanation of how the required exposure time was estimated,
• information on whether the observations are time-critical, and whether the observations must be coordinated in a way that affects the scheduling (of either the NOAO or the HST observations),
• a description of any special scheduling or implementation requirements (e.g., optimum and acceptable dates).

Successful proposers will be asked to supply additional details about the observations, i.e., the same details required for NOAO proposals for the particular telescope/instrument. This ‘Phase II - NOAO’ information must be submitted by the nominal September 30, 2019 NOAO deadline for the 2020A semester. In addition, for NOAO time on Gemini, successful PIs will be required to submit a complete NOAO proposal by the nominal September 30, 2019 deadline on the standard NOAO proposal form. Submission instructions will be forthcoming following notification of the results of the HST review.

Technical documentation about the NOAO facilities is available from the NOAO webpage. Questions may be directed to the NOAO Proposal Help Desk by e-mail to noaoprop-help@noao.edu. NOAO will perform feasibility checks on any approved proposals.

Joint HST-NRAO Observations

Proposers requesting joint HST-NRAO observations must provide:

• the choice of NRAO telescope(s) (VLA, VLBA and/or GBT), and
• the total estimated NRAO observing time in hours.

NRAO plans to make up to 3% of VLA, VLBA, and GBT observing time available for this opportunity with a maximum of 5% in any array configuration and including an 18-month period close to the HST Cycle 27 such that all VLA configurations are available. A VLA configuration schedule is published at:

https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vla/proposing/configpropdeadlines

Detailed technical information concerning the NRAO telescopes can be found at:

• http://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vla
• http://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vlba
• http://science.nrao.edu/facilities/gbt

For the VLA, joint proposals may only use capabilities defined as “general observing” in the NRAO VLA 2019B Call for Proposals, which will be available in January 2019. Technical questions about proposing or observing for NRAO telescopes (whose answers are not found in the above links) should be posted to the NRAO helpdesk.

If approved for NRAO time, successful PIs will be contacted by the NRAO Scheduling Officers (schedsoc@nrao.edu for the VLA/VLBA and gbtime@nrao.edu for the GBT). The successful PIs for GBT projects will be responsible for organizing the project's information in the GBT Dynamic Scheduling Software and for carrying out their GBT observations. For the VLA and VLBA, the PIs will be responsible for submitting scheduling blocks to the telescopes' dynamic queues. Projects requiring simultaneous HST-NRAO observations will be performed on fixed dates. In conjunction with HST, the NRAO Scheduling Officers will inform the PIs of those dates and times, and the PIs will be responsible for submitting scheduling blocks two weeks prior to the observations.

Joint HST-TESS Observations

Proposers requesting joint HST-TESS observations must provide a full and comprehensive technical justification for the TESS portion of their program, including:

• the suitability of using TESS survey data products,
• a justification for the selection and number of targets,
• and justification that the 2-minute cadence will sufficiently meet their science goals.

Proposals to detect planets within the 2-minute cadence data of the 100,000 top-prioritized Candidate Target List (for each hemisphere and TESS-GI Cycle) will not be considered. Technical information on the TESS Guest Investigator Program is available on the TESS website. 

Justify Duplications

(This item is required only for GO Proposals)

Justify, on a target-by-target basis, any potential duplication with previously accepted observing programs. Use the ‘Duplication’ checkbox in the Observation Summary to identify the duplicating observations. See Data Rights and Duplications for policies on duplications.

Analysis Plan