Notes from the meeting of the Calar Alto Time Allocation Committee on October, 27/28 2005 at Calar Alto

The last meeting of the Calar Alto Time Allocation Committee was held on October, 27/28 2005 at Calar Alto. Compared to the last two semester, the number of proposal submitted was lower. In total, 98 proposal for the autumn semester 2005 had to be reviewed. They split of in 66 proposals (20 German, 32 Spanish, 14 International) for open time at the 3.5m telescope and 32 proposals (19 German, 10 Spanish, 3 International) for open time at the 2.2m telescope. This resulted in an oversubscription of ~2.4 for the 3.5m telescope and ~1 for the 2.2m telescope. Judging from the last 4 semester, the number of proposals submitted for the 3.5m telescope from the Spanish community remains constantly high, while a drop of about 50% of the proposal submitted from the German community is observed. Remarkably is the continously increasing number of international proposal submitted for the 3.5m telescope (not only Opticon proposal), which clearly reflects its superb instrumentation. The opposite can be observed for the 2.2m telescope. Here, the number of proposal from the Spanish community has dropped by about 50%, while it remains constant for the German community.

In the last two semester, the TAC discussed only the highest 75% ranked proposal for the 3.5m telescope and the other only upon request. This was not feasible this time. The distribution of grades was pretty broad (last two times it was rather double-humped) with large differences of the grades between referees in many cases. Thus, all of the 66 proposal for the 3.5m had to be discussed in detail.

Since the oversubscription was very low at the 2.2m telescope and since many long-term proposal and ToO-proposals were submitted for this telescope, an "adaptive" strategy was adopted here. Firstly, the very best proposal were identified and Service A status assigned. Then, the long-term and ToO-programs were discussed. In total 2 monitoring and 3 ToO-programs were approved (all with Cafos/Busca). This clearly may (and has already) severely affected regular observations. In oder to compensate immediately for telescope time potentially lost by the regular observers, for each of the approved monitoring programs up two twice the amount of time requested was allocated. Then, the lowest 10 ranked proposal were discussed in order to identify those, which were not recommended for implementation,. This was done until all the nights available were filled. The extra time allocated for the long-term programs was distributed among the regular programs and is exactly the reason why so many applicants got an letter telling them that they received one or two more nights than initially requested. If this proves useful and if the feedback is positive with this way of lowering their pain, the TAC will continue with this strategy in the future. It should finally be emphasized that the low oversubscription at the 2.2m might continue as long as no new instrumental upgrades or new instruments are available. On the other hand, the 2.2m is a very stable telescope with almost zero downtime. Thus the communities are encouraged to consider the use of the 2.2m for large/monitoring programs (e.g. monitoring of variable objects, follow-up spectroscopy of wide-angle surveys etc.).

In the end, 25 proposals (9 German, 11 Spanish, 5 International) were accepted for the 3.5m telescope and 26 proposals (15 German, 8 Spanish, 3 International) were accepted for the 2.2m telescope. Both, the MPIA and CSIC made full use of their guaranteed time at the 3.5m, while for the 2.2m telescope only one guaranteed time proposal had to be scheduled. As in the last spring semester, the oversubscription for the months February - April was highest, but all of the initially recommended programs could be scheduled. As in the last semester, the science presented in the proposal was very exiting and it's not a surprise that the TAC had a very hard time to identify the very best ones (and felt sad in many cases that a particular program could not be implemented).

All the best for your Calar Alto proposals in 2006

Jochen Heidt