The Swift GI Program solicits proposals for basic research that is relevant to the Swift GRB mission. Cycle 13 of the Swift GI Program began in April 2017 and will last for 12 months. Cycle 14 will begin in April 2018 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 Cycle 14 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.
There is no limit on the number of time-constrained observations.
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.
Key Projects are intended to greatly advance the Swift science program,
enhance its breadth of impact, and represent an enduring legacy of Swift results.
Proposals in this category may request support for new Swift projects,
theoretical investigations, observations of non-GRB non-ToO targets, and observations of ToO targets.
The proposed research plans can be carried out in one or two years.
Key Projects proposals may also require funding in the range of $100,000 per year.
Such budget requests will be considered, provided they are strongly justified.
Proposals requesting fill-in targets or support for correlative observations cannot
be submitted into this category.
Successful proposers do not get any proprietary rights to any Swift data. Table 1 lists the critical dates for Cycle 13 GI proposals. For more information please see the Swift Guest Investigator Program Web page.
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