sci15003 — Announcement

Cycle 23 Time Allocation Committee Highlights

6 July 2015

Wednesday 24 June was a day that all Hubble observers both long for and fear, as it is the day when notifications go out to the successful Principal Investigators (PIs), letting them know that their programme has beaten the scientific oversubscription odds and that they will now be very busy completing the Phase II instructions needed to schedule their observations.

One hundred and fifty astronomers, including 28 from Europe, met at the Space Telescope Science Institute in early June to assess the 1115 proposals submitted. This included 891 general observer proposals, 42 snapshot proposals, and 182 archival research proposals, with a total orbit request for the 891 general observer proposals of 19 301 orbits.

For ESA member state PIs, Cycle 23 brings a record success: you have competitively won 29.2% of the proposals and the allocated orbits. Congratulations!

Over the Hubble mission lifetime, there is an average success rate for Europeans of 22% for proposals and 18% for orbits. Wow!

In Figure 1, we show the rate of success for PIs from ESA member states as a function of cycle, and the trend is very interesting. We had observed an increase in the number of successful proposals in the recent years, but this success was not matched by the orbit requests. In this cycle, not only has the number of successful proposals jumped up by several percent, but this was also matched by the number of orbits requested and allocated, indicating that you have become bolder in your requests, submitting more competitive large and medium proposals, and that this strategy has paid off.

It is also interesting to observe that Co-Investigators (Co-Is) from ESA member states make up 31% of the total Co-Is proposing for Hubble time, a great testament to the fact that Hubble is a truly international enterprise.

I am looking forward to seeing the results of this tremendous effort, and acknowledge the great science that you all are doing with Hubble.

As you start planning your observations, please remember that ESA/Hubble is a resource for you to help you in advertising and engaging the world with your results. We will do all the supporting work for you. If you have results you wish to share please contact Mathias Jäger and Georgia Bladon at the ESA/Hubble press office hubble@eso.org.

Best of luck!

Contacts

Antonella Nota
ESA HST Project Scientist, STScI
Email: hubblenewseurope@stsci.edu