General Questions

• How long will observations remain proprietary?
• Can you propose coordinated observations with other telescopes? > (e.g., if there is a time-dependent phenomena that you wanted to > observe both with Herschel and a coordinated ground-based telescope, say > within the same day or week, is that possible? Apparently this goes on > more frequently with x-ray telescopes...)
• How can I find out what GTO programs have been accepted?
• Generic Target Policy: Suppose I would like to target 30 sources with Herschel selected out of 100 sources being observed in (say) an on-going Spitzer program, and if those Spitzer observations won't be completed by the time of the Herschel proposal deadline, can I still submit a Herschel proposal without specifying exactly which 30 sources I will observe?
• What is considered a duplicate observation? Are their hard and fast rules as in the case of, say, Spitzer?
• What is a co-user of a Herschel proposal?
• Why do my time estimates change, or the overheads look wrong, when I concatenate an observation?
• Why do my constrained observation times in HSpot suddenly become out of date?
• If I have registered for the NHSC Helpdesk, do I need to register with the HSC helpdesk in Europe?
• I was trying to just get a feel for how much time I would need to expose to get to a 5-sigma limit of XXX mJy in band YYYY -- is there an easy "tool" inside HSPOT to do this without constructing an AOR?
• What are the assumed values for the telescope/mirror temperature and emissivity in HSpot?

Answer: One year (for all flavors of investigation) for data acquired in the first year. The clock starts when data are available from the archive. After the first year, the HSC will move towards a six-month period for the rest of the mission. For more details, please see the ESA HSC documentation on policies. http://herschel.esac.esa.int/ao_kp_documentation.shtml

Question: Can you propose coordinated observations with other telescopes? > (e.g., if there is a time-dependent phenomena that you wanted to > observe both with Herschel and a coordinated ground-based telescope, say > within the same day or week, is that possible? Apparently this goes on > more frequently with x-ray telescopes...)

Answer: There is presently no such direct provision in the ESA policies for Herschel. However, certain timing constraints can be applied to observations that generally will allow such coordination. If possible propose that as a constraint, and explain clearly what you need. The NHSC will work with you to help with the coordination for accepted proposals. The observer will need to ensure that whatever coordination is needed is well known my all facilities involved.

Question: How can I find out what GTO programs have been accepted?

Answer: You can get the abstracts via HSpot, using the File->View Accepted Proposal option, and the program title from the list of Guaranteed Time Key Programs. In addition we are making a summary of all accepted GTO programs available on a spread sheet. See the Reserved Observations List Guide

Question: Generic Target Policy: Suppose I would like to target 30 sources with Herschel selected out of 100 sources being observed in (say) an on-going Spitzer program, and if those Spitzer observations won't be completed by the time of the Herschel proposal deadline, can I still submit a Herschel proposal without specifying exactly which 30 sources I will observe?

Answer: The observer will have to include the 100 sources in the list of targets of the proposal to be submitted to HOTAC. In HSpot, the observer should enter only 30 AORs, selected from the 100 objects with any criteria that he/she chooses. These 30 AORs shall be used for the time estimation, and if the proposal is accepted, they will be blocked observations. The other 70 targets will not be blocked. At a later stage, the observer will be allowed to exchange the targets in the 30 AORs by other targets from the initial 100-targets list, as long as they have not been included in the mean time in other accepted proposals, such that they would be considered duplications.

Question: What is considered a duplicate observation? Are their hard and fast rules as in the case of, say, Spitzer?

Answer: The ESA Herschel Science Centre (HSC) has recently issued a clarification of the Herschel duplication policy (see http://herschel.esac.esa.int/ao_kp_latest_news.shtml) providing some important guidelines to prospective observers about what constitutes a potential duplicate observation. Before submitting an OTKP, proposal teams should look carefully at this document to check for possible implications for their proposal and AOR designs.

Question: What is a co-user of a Herschel proposal?

Answer: A co-user of a Herschel proposal is the only person(s), apart from the PI, who, once registered to the Herschel services, is authorized to retrieve and submit new versions of this proposal during the Phase 1 of a call and to resubmit updated versions of it during Phase 2. In addition, he/she has full access to the information associated to the proposal(s) for which he/she is co-user through the Proposal Handling System at: http://herschel.esac.esa.int/PHS.shtml

Co-users are expected to be co-investigators in the proposal, but this is not a requirement. Note that only PIs can add (or remove) co-users to the proposals they have submitted.

Question: Why do my time estimates change, or the overheads look wrong, when I concatenate an observation?

Answer: If you define a concatenated chain and then press Observation Est. for the AOR you may get a wrong overhead applied to the observation, or you may get an overhead which is not the standard 180s. The first is a known issue that will be fixed in a new user release of HSpot; the second is a new feature of HSpot that allows more accurate time estimation. When you re-compute all your time estimates HSpot will apply the overheads correctly to all the observations. When submitting or re-submitting a proposal HSpot also automatically recalculates all time estimates as part of proposal submission. You should use the re-compute all time estimates option in HSpot before submitting a proposal to ensure that the total time is correct. HSpot now allows for the time taken to carry out instrument set-up and internal calibration to be included as part of the slew overhead. In other words, if the calibration time is less than the slew overhead that HSpot applies, calibration time will not be added to the observation. However, in some cases the calibration time may be longer than 180 seconds. If this is the case, HSpot will apply a slew overhead of 180s plus the excess calibration time over and above this slew time (e.g. if the calibration time is 210s and the slew overhead is 180s, HSpot will apply 180 + (210-180) = 210s as the total overhead). Normally the user will find that the overhead that is actually applied is smaller than previously.

Question: Why do my constrained observation times in HSpot suddenly become out of date?

Answer: There is a known issue with HSpot that opening the Constraint Editor resets the time estimate of all previously computed AORs. This happens especially on Windows and Mac, but only to a lesser degree on Linux; on Solaris it does NOT happen. This behavior is documented in the HSpot Known Problems document that is available on the Herschel Webpage. It is an inconvenience, but is not serious in the sense that the correct timing information will be generated automatically on proposal submission and will be stored in our database. Take care to re-run all time estimates when you have completed your AORs, just before submission to ensure that your estimates are up to date and that your total time is correct.

Question: If I have registered for the NHSC Helpdesk, do I need to register with the HSC helpdesk in Europe?

Answer: Yes. If you are planning to submit a proposal then you will need to resister at both places. You will need to register with the HSC (Europe) to ask questions relating to proposals submitted to ESA in time for the Oct 25th deadline, and you would be well advised to register with the NHSC helpdesk, because you may have questions regarding NASA funding and any problems that you may have with NASA Funding proposals which has a deadline of Oct 26th at 5pm--this is less than 24hrs after the ESA proposals are due.

Question: I was trying to just get a feel for how much time I would need to expose to get to a 5-sigma limit of XXX mJy in band YYYY -- is there an easy "tool" inside HSPOT to do this without constructing an AOR?

Answer: Unfortunately the answer is no. It is pretty much impossible to provide this kind of information without designing an AOR. The reason is that there are many modes, and many ways of performing a given observation within a given mode (say PACS mapping), and the expected S/N would depend on many aspects, including source strength, mode, redundancy, number of repetitions, coverage etc. So I am sorry to say that a detailed answer is not possible without making an AOR to suit your observation. However HSpot is well suited to this and will do all the hard work for you.

Unlike Spitzer SPOT, HSpot calculates the expected noise for a given mode and set of observations and is very easy to use. Just set up an observation and run the estimator in HSpot and you will find that a lot of useful information is provided. It is quite straightforward.

Question: What are the assumed values for the telescope/mirror temperature and emissivity in HSpot?

Answer: The telescope/mirror temperature is assumed to be 85K. The emissivity curve (wavelength dependence) is taken from the following reference: Fischer, J. et al. (2004) ApOpt, 43, 3765