Discretionary Programme - CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme

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 **** The CHEOPS Discretionary Programme is now open ****

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CHEOPS Discretionary programme

This webpage provide prospective users of CHEOPS with all information (policies and procedures for the programme, documentation, tools and links)  required to prepare and submit proposals to the CHEOPS Discretionary Pragmme, through which 5% of the nominal science observing obsering time on CHEOPS will be allocated.

To be eligible for the Discretionary Programme a proposal must meet the following criteria:

• Contain a single target of high scientific interest
• Demonstrate that the target was either (a) discovered, or (b) declared to be of high scientific interest since the close of the previous call (16 May 2019)
• Contain a target/event that is observable by the date foreseen for the end of AO cycle 2 (March 24 2022), and that is not on the CHEOPS Reserverd Target List

Details regarding what needs to be included in a proposal, together with the tools and documentation to support proposal preparation and submission, can be found in the Policies and Procedures document for the Discretionary Programme. Prospective observers are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to read very carefully through this document.

Important Notes:

• The sole way to submit proposals for the CHEOPS Discretionary Programme is through the Phase I Proposal Handling Tool. To submit a proposal you will need to have user credentials for the Cosmos Website AND to be a member of the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme Group. You will also need to be a member of the GO Programme group to be able to download the software for the Scheduling Feasibility Checker, which is one of the tools that you will need to prepare your proposal (see notes below). Requests for both IDs and group membership are made by following the instructions at the following link:  https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/cheops-guest-observers-programme/register​​​​​​​
• It is important to appreciate that the majority of CHEOPS observations will be time-critical. These can be difficult to schedule, and in some cases may not be possible even if a target is awarded observing time and is high priority.
• CHEOPS is a small mission, with a correspondingly small team supporting the Community in their use of CHEOPS. Response times to questions may therefore take a little longer than may be the case for a larger mission/observatory.
• Notifications of updates/changes to application procedures wlll be published on these pages - people thinking about appying for discretionary time are advised to check this page regularly and certainly before submitting their proposals.
• A short summary of proposals awarded time in the discretionary programme will be made available at this link.
• Please check the Frequently Asked Questions page for both answers to commonly asked questions

In case of questions, please send an email to cheops-support@cosmos.esa.int,  or kate dot isaak at esa.int, replacing the " dot " by "." and " at " by "@".

Documentation:

• Policies and Procedures document for the Discretionary Programme (as above).

Tools and supporting manuals:

• Phase I Proposal Handling Tool (PHT1).
• An update of CHEOPS performances post In-Orbit Commissioning (presentation).
• ​​​​Exposure Time Calculator and manual​​​​​​.
• CHEOPS scheduling feasibility checker - installation notes and user instructions.
• CHEOPS Reserved Target List Checker.
• CHEOPS Observers Manual.

Useful Data/information:

• CHEOPS data page - includes links to simulated CHEOPS data (generated using CHEOPSim) as well data sets for selected observations made during In-orbit Commissioning
• 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).
• CHEOPS Data Products Defintion Document (DPDD) -- includes a description of the content (including meta data) of all CHEOPS data files (Latest issue: May 2020)

User-contributed tools/aids:

Below is a list of tools that have been developed by members of the CHEOPS Science Team for their own use. These have been made available "as-is" via the links below, with caveats and warnings that are detailed in the individual pages

• 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 for the analysis of CHEOPS light curves