Time Allocation Committee (TAC)



Current members

The current CAHA TAC members are seven recognized experts (incl. one chair) in the main areas of modern astrophysics:

  • Juan Carlos Suárez (chair, University of Granada, Spain)
  • Sonia Anton (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
  • Francisco González (IAA Granada, Spain)
  • Luca Izzo (Niels Bohr Institute Copenhagen, Denmark)
  • Yolanda Jiménez Teja (IAA Granada, Spain)
  • Giuseppe Morello (IAA Granada-CSIC, Spain)
Please contact the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for any matter regarding the committee.

Next  meeting

Spring 2024: evaluation of the proposals for the fall 2024 (24B) semester, from July 1st to December 31st.



The Time Allocation Committee (TAC) evaluates the proposals for open observing time at Calar Alto and, for each proposal, determines a rating and recommends a number of nights to be allocated.

The ratings, recommended number of nights to be allocated and the available number of nights for the semester define a cut-off rating for each telescope. Proposals with rating better than this cut-off are scheduled by the observatory director in a preliminary schedule. Due to scheduling constraints such as phase of the moon, instrument availability etc. the cut-off cannot be a hard margin. Therefore the actually allocated number of nights, the phase of the moon, or the time location within the semester may have to deviate from the application as well as from the recommendation of the TAC. In the extreme case, some proposals rated better than the cut-off may not be schedulable at all or a proposal with a rating near but below the cut-off may fill a slot and be scheduled.

It is evident that, except under extraordinary circumstances, no changes can be made to the schedule after the observing times have been communicated to the observers.

Statutes of the TAC


Last updated: 15 February 2024