Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
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NRAO Observing Plan in Fermi GI Program Scientific Justification

By agreement with NRAO, proposers interested in making use of the NRAO Very Large Array (VLA), Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) or Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) facilities as part of their Fermi science may submit a single proposal through the "Joint Proposal Opportunity."

If you wish to make use of this opportunity, you must select the NRAO joint proposal program on the RPS form. You must then provide basic information about the requested observations (e.g., the number of hours on the particular NRAO facility). This information will be used by the peer review process.

You should provide the following NRAO-related information as part of your scientific justification (please group this information into one contiguous section of the text):

  • Indicate the choice of NRAO telescope(s) (VLA, VLBA or GBT);
  • For the VLA, indicate the requested configuration(s). Because of the Expanded VLA construction project, the future schedule for moving antennas into the different VLA configurations is still uncertain, so the predictions of configuration dates given at http://www.vla.nrao.edu/genpub/configs/ should be regarded as tentative;
  • Enter the total estimated observing time and the observing wavelength(s) for each telescope/configuration; and
  • Include in your scientific justification a full and comprehensive scientific and technical justification for the requested NRAO observing time.

Demonstration of the technical feasibility of the proposed NRAO observations is the responsibility of the proposer, and must include image sensitivity and fidelity needs. The technical feasibility will be reviewed by NRAO before the proposal is evaluated. Detailed technical information concerning the VLA and the VLBA can be found at http://www.vla.nrao.edu/astro/ (VLA), at http://www.vlba.nrao.edu/astro/ (VLBA) and at http://www.gb.nrao.edu/gbt/ (GBT). In particular, note the comprehensive 'Observational Status Summary' for each telescope, posted at http://www.vla.nrao.edu/astro/guides/vlas/current/ (VLA), at http://www.vlba.nrao.edu/astro/obstatus/current/obssum.html (VLBA), and at http://www.gb.nrao.edu/astronomers.shtml (GBT).

If approved for NRAO time, successful PIs will be contacted by the VLA/VLBA/GBT Scheduling Officers (schedsoc@nrao.edu) once scheduling details are known. The successful PIs will then be responsible for submitting observing scripts to analysts@nrao.edu (VLA), to vlbiobs@nrao.edu (VLBA) or to the GBT. The deadline for the receipt of these scripts will be communicated by the VLA/VLBA/GBT Scheduling Officers. NRAO will perform final feasibility checks on these scripts and reserves the right to reject any observation determined to be infeasible for any reason. Such a rejection could jeopardize the success of the joint science program.