Filling the BeppoSAX Proposal Form

The BeppoSAX primary time proposal is composed of five different parts, each corresponding to one or more forms. The first four parts include information that will be used by the BeppoSAX team for observation planning. The fifth part will be used by the Time Allocation Committee for the proposals selection. The proposal form is arranged in a tree structure as follows:

General Information Form
    Pointing Form #1
        Instrument Form #1 for pointing #1
        Instrument Form #2 for pointing #1
        ....
        Instrument Form #n for pointing #1
                Additional Information Form for pointing #1
    ....
    Pointing Form #m
        Instrument Form #1 for pointing #m
        Instrument Form #2 for pointing #m
        ....
        Instrument Form #n for pointing #m
                Additional Information Form for pointing #m

Scientific Justification Form

1. the first part consists of the General Information Form, including Investigator's information, Proposal's title and abstract.

2. The second part is composed of one or more Pointing Information Forms, containing target coordinates, time constraints.

3. For each Pointing Information Form there must be one or more Instrument Information Forms, defining the configuration of each instrument per pointing and the observing time. The proposal should include as many Instrument Information Forms as are the instruments to be used. There is a limited possibility of changing the instrument setting during a pointing. In this case the different instrument settings must be specified in two different Instrument information forms.

   All the instrument forms related to a pointing form must come immediately next to it.

4. Additional Information Forms. These are optional in case of STANDARD proposals and can be used to provide further details, in particular on time constraints. For the case of TOO proposals it is mandatory to fill this form with the criteria needed to identify the TOO event and to plan the follow up observations.

5. The last part, the Scientific Justification Form, should contain the scientific case, observational strategy (including a priority list, if deemed useful) and technical feasibility. It should not be longer than 4 pages (including figures) with character size not smaller than 10 points.

A proposal template for the first four forms is shown in Sect. 6. It is a simple ascii file that can be compiled using a normal text editor or with the help of a WWW tool available at the following URL:

• /bepposax/spass/

The proposal form can also be retrieved via network, as explained in Sect. 3.2.2, compiled with any editor and sent to BeppoSAX SDC as explained in Sect. 4.

The present section is intended to provide guidance in filling the forms, with particular regard to those entries that are not self explanatory. More details on the format of the electronic form are given in the next section.