CFHT policy
on
Target of Opportunity (ToO) Observations

  1. Only ToO programs accepted by one of the CFHT national TACs or by the Executive Director via a Director Discretionary(DD) proposal can be activated for observations. All accepted ToO programs have to follow the rules outlined in the QSO webpage to prepare their programs and observations.

  2. The target coordinates requested by an accepted ToO program must be submitted prior to an observing night in the QSO mode, ideally several hours before the beginning of the night in Hawaii. It is not possible to submit and execute the observations during an observing night.

  3. Target prioritization for ToO triggers in the Queues will be determined by the National TAC or DD time ranking at the time of the program's allocations. The CFHT QSO team reserves the right to change these priorities based the scientific relevance of the proposed targets at the time the observations are performed.

  4. If TOO triggers from multiple programs are considered by the QSO team to have duplicate observations at the same time, the programs requesting the ToO will have to share the data coming from the observations that are considered duplicate.

  5. The CFHT standard proprietary period of one year applies to all ToO observations. This can only be overwritten by the Executive Director.