The OPTICON call for Transnational Access in Semester 2018A is OPEN and will close on August 31st 2017

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are pleased to announce that the call for observing time at night time telescopes supported by the OPTICON Trans-National Access programme is now open. See http://www.astro-opticon.org/h2020/tna/call/index.html. The call will close on 31 August at 23.59UT exactly.

The Horizon 2020 contract has added two new robotic telescopes, a requirement to support time domain astronomy which is defined as a science category in its own right and some changes to the rules on applicant nationalities. We have also tried to define which facilities are best able to support various kinds of overrides, monitoring and time critical observations. Please review the web-page notes carefully, even if you have used the TNA programme before. Note in particular the need to consult with the project scientist if you were hoping to use the MPG2.2m for which the PI will have to demonstrate that certain insurance provisions can be met before observers will be allowed to travel to La Silla.

The semester is centred on Mar 2018 to August 2018, but there are small variations at some telescopes to accommodate their normal semesters and maximise scheduling flexibility. Note that technical support for the submission software is not provided out-of-hours and late applications will not be accepted, so please complete your application in plenty of time. In recent semesters we have received between 60-75 proposals and allocated about 15 projects per semester.

Good Luck.