CFHT National TAC Guidelines

Since the matter of scheduling has become more than usually problematic recently, the Board of Directors has requested that guidelines be drawn up that emphasize some of the non-scientific considerations that need to be addressed by CTAC and CFGT in submitting their ranked proposal lists for scheduling.

  1. Proposals should initially be ranked in order of scientific merit as judged by the committee with advice from referees and CFHT as relevant.
  2. The list should contain all proposals that are acceptable - i.e. omit only those that would be a waste of telescope time or are flawed.
  3. The ranked list should include proposals that fill all months of the semester. Severe oversubscription or undersubscription of any months will only cause scheduling problems that will have to be dealt with later.
  4. The ranked list should also fill the available balance of lunar phases for the same reason.
  5. The rules for for instrument changes and length of run should also be considered.
  6. In the case of problems with these distributions it may be helpful to consult the chair of the other TAC to see if any useful trade can be made between months, lunar phases, or instrument runs.
  7. The committee should also consider whether the requested months or lunar phases can be extended beyond those requested and still be viable.
  8. In the case of severe oversubscription with high ranked proposals the committee should consider whether time may be shared between similar proposals.
  9. Where it is necessary to re-rank proposals for any of the above reasons additional criteria may be:
  10. It should be the goal of the TACs to submit ranked lists that do not oversubscribe dark or bright time or individual months by more than a factor of 1.5.
  11. It is anticipated that CFHT12K will be operated in queue scheduled mode. For queue scheduling, the ranking considerations also should include a range of the necessary image quality. However, there will be less emphasis on dates and lunar phase since partial nights can be used.
  12. The proprietary time is now approved at 1 year, and the TAC should look for and comment on any requested extensions to this in the proposals.  

Dennis Crabtree, John Hutchings Dec 1998