next up previous contents
Next: Joint Swift/XMM-Newton Program Up: Observatory Policy Previous: Proprietary Data Rights   Contents


Guest Investigator Program

The Swift GI Program solicits proposals for basic research that is relevant to the Swift GRB mission. Cycle 10 of the Swift GI Program began in April 2014 and will last for 12 months. Cycle 11 will begin in April 2015 and last for 12 months.

The Swift GI Program is open to all principal investigators, but funding is only available to scientists at U.S. institutions for proposals with a principal investigator at a U.S. institution. U.S.-based co-investigators on non-U.S. led proposals do not qualify for funding.

The GI Program is intended to provide the following benefits to participating scientists.

It is anticipated that a total of five million seconds of observing time will be made available to the GI component of the Cycle 11 GI program. Swift observations will be performed only as the result of an uploaded ground command through the normal science planning process. Proposers may not request autonomous slewing. GI observations will have a lower scheduling priority than GRBs and will be observed on a best-effort basis as time becomes available in the observing schedule. This restriction means that successful proposers should be aware that they are not assured 100% of the time awarded will actually be available. Every effort will be made to observe 80% or more of an accepted program within scheduling constraints. A single observation is defined as one requested pointing at a target, but proposers should be aware that, due to Swift's low orbit and scheduling priorities, any GI observation longer than approximately 20-30 min is likely to be split into multiple snapshots on different orbits.

Non-target-of-opportunity proposals are subject to the following limitations.

Time constrained observations are subject to the following limitations.

ToO proposals are subject to the following constraints.

Large proposals are defined as proposals that have more than 100 targets or more than 100 ks total exposure time. Due to Swift's low Earth orbit, and scheduling priorities for other objects, any long observation exceeding a few ks will be broken up into several different visits on different orbits.

Fill-in targets are intended to provide a list of peer-reviewed targets that can be used to fill in gaps in Swift's planned science observations timeline. Fill-in targets must not be ToOs, must have no observational constraints, and can not require multiple observations. The total requested integration time must be between 1000 s and 40000 s. There is no guarantee that any fill-in target will be observed, or reobserved if observations are interrupted. There is no funding available for fill-in observations.

Successful proposers do not get any proprietary rights to any Swift data. Table 1 lists the critical dates for Cycle 11 GI proposals. For more information please see the Swift Guest Investigator Program Web page.


Table 1: Critical dates for the Swift Cycle 11 GI Program.
Date Action
Sep 25, 2014 Phase 1 Proposals Due at 4.30pm EDT
early Dec 2014 Proposal Review
early Jan 2015 Phase 2 Budget Proposals Due
Apr 1, 2015 Cycle 11 Investigations Begin
Mar 31, 2016 Cycle 11 Investigations End




Subsections
next up previous contents
Next: Joint Swift/XMM-Newton Program Up: Observatory Policy Previous: Proprietary Data Rights   Contents
Eleonora Troja 2014-08-15