Large Programs at CFHT

We are currently executing the 2022B - 2024A Large Programs, two of which have received an extension until 2025A inclusively.

The results of the Call for 2025A - 2026B CFHT Large Programs are now available.

The very first large program at CFHT was the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey, CFHTLS, which was started mid-2003 and finished in 2009. More than 2300 hours over 5 years (an equivalent of 460 hours per year) have been devoted to the survey using MegaCam.

Starting in 2008, CFHT went to smaller and more numerous Large Programs (LPs) that can request instruments other than MegaCam. Flexibility was added by allowing observations to be spread out on all semesters or concentrated on fewer semesters. This has shown that programs with allocations spread out over time are generally more robust to weather losses. Multi-agency proposals were greatly encouraged. These programs ensure that CFHT remains competitive and also enhance the legacy value of our archival data. CFHT maintains curated ADS libraries that list publications based on the CFHTLS or Large Programs.

The 2008-2012 round and the 2013-2016 round were based on this model. For each round, six LP using MegaCam, WIRCam, or ESPaDOnS were accepted. With the 2017-2019 proposals, CFHT carried three bigger LP over a period of three years, on MegaCam and WIRCam.

The call for proposals for 2018B - 2022A period received 5 proposals that requested a total of 670 Nights. A total of 354.7 nights were allocated to two proposals, on CFHT's newest instruments then, SITELLE and SPIRou.

In November 2018, the SAC issued a completion policy for all Large Programs started in 2017A and onward. Starting with a Large Program's mid-term review , a LP completion review will be triggered if a LP has an expected program completion below 80%, and/or SAC considers that the LP may not achieve the proposed science goals. If the review is favorable, the LP will be allocated time in future semesters in order to bring the program completion to at least 80%. Depending upon the available pool of future unallocated LP time (considering the maximum fraction for LPs set by the agencies), these allocations could be in semesters during and/or after the term.