SECOND Announcement of Opportunity (AO-2) for participation in the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme

This announcement solicits proposals for observations to be carried out as part of the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programm,  and covering the period of March 26 2021 to March 25 2022

Milestones

Release of AO-2: call for Phase I observing proposals           4 November 2020

Deadline for submission of Phase I observing proposals        1 December 2020 (13:00 CET/12:00 GMT)

Meeting of the CHEOPS Time Allocation Committee              2 - 4 February 2021

Announcement of award of observing time on CHEOPS         by 19 February 2021

Preparation of Phase II inputs                                            25 February - 10 March 2021

Start of Year 2 of CHEOPS                                                 26 March 2021

Important Notes:

Prospective observers are requested to take note of the following points:

• All proposals must be submitted via the Phase I Proposal Handling Tool. Submission requires the use of a Cosmos Website ID together with membership of the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme Group. Registration is required to download the software for the Scheduling Feasibility Checker, which is one of the tools needed to prepare proposals (see notes below) and also to download simulated CHEOPS data. Requests for both IDs and group membership need to be made by following the instructions at the following link:  https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/cheops-guest-observers-programme/register

         We recommend that you get an ID/register early during the call.

• The minimum time that can be requested is 1 orbit per target.
• It is important to appreciate that, due to the nature of the science that CHEOPS will address, the majority of CHEOPS observations will be time critical. These can be difficult to schedule, and in some cases it may not be possible even if a target is awarded observing time and is high priority.
• All tools and documentation, with the exception of ESA Phase I Proposal Handling Tool are provided by the CHEOPS Consortium, and are the same as those used by the Science Team to prepare the Guaranteed Time Observing Programme.
• CHEOPS is a small mission, with a correspondingly small team to support Guest Observers. Observers are advised to not to leave proposal preparation to the last weeks, as the response time incase of questions may be up to a few days.
• A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page will be maintained throughout the call, and throughout Year 2 of CHEOPS. This may be consulted at this link.
• Notifications of any issues/updates to Call material will be published on the page at this link - prospectiver proposers are recommended to check this page regularly during the period of the call.
  • Check this link for important updates to the proposal templates

Last updated:  24 November 2020

Key Documentation:

• Announcement of Opportunity (AO-2) - invitation from the Director of Science
• AO-2 Policies and Procedures - prospective observers are reminded to read carefully hrough this document, as it contains essential information relevant to the AO.
• CHEOPS Observers' Manual;
• A presentation illustrating the photometric performances and precision of CHEOPS; 

Tools and supporting manuals:

A number of tools and documents are available to help you with your proposal preparation.

• Phase I Proposal Handling Tool (proposal submission) and a csv-formatted file that may be used for the upload of multiple targets;
• Templates for the Scientific Justification and Technical Justification and Implementation documents;
• CHEOPS Exposure Time Calculator (with online help -  pdf export of results required for proposal submission);
• CHEOPS Scheduling Feasibility Checker - installation instructions + user guidelines + details of FTP site to download the required virtual machine image;
• CHEOPS Reserved Target List Checker tool;
• CHEOPS Reserved Target List as on 4 November 2020 in csv format.

useful presentations, reference data and links    

• In-orbit measurement of the CHEOPS point spread function (also available directly from the CHEOPS archive: REF_APP_WhitePSF)
• CHEOPS QE curve (also available directly from the CHEOPS archive: REF_APP_QE)
• CHEOPS optical throughput (Beginning of Life: also available directly from the CHEOPS archive: REF_APP_Throughput-BeginOfLife)
• CHEOPS visibility maps (annual accumulated +1 day (per month) + ascii in a tarball) with README file (note the update relative to that provided in the tarball).
• Simulated CHEOPS data: raw, level data products and ancilliary files, reports and README file;
• Link to the CHEOPS Mission Archive
• Link to the CHEOPS Data page which contains the details of selected CHEOPS data taken during IOC that is already public, simulated data and reference data.
• CHEOPS Data Products Defintion Document (DPDD)

User-contributed tools/aids:

Here we provide links to documentation that has been deveolped by members of the CHEOPS Science Team. These are shared for use at the user's own risk, with caveats and warnings that are detailed in the individual documents.

• A tool to generate XML files for input to the CHEOPS scheduling feasibility checker, based on a table of data for multiple observing requests provided by the user.
• pycheops - a python package developed by members of the CHEOPS Science Team for the analysis of CHEOPS light curves
• linea - an open source, open development Python package for fast, linear detrending of CHEOPS photometry, by Brett Morris. Follow tutorials in the detailed documentation here, or find the code and post issues to GitHub.

Help:

• Please check the Frequently Asked Questions page