OPTICON

Optical Infrared Coordination Network for Astronomy

Horizon 2020

ORP OPTICAL Telescope Transnational Access

Within the OPTICON-Radionet Pilot  contract, its Trans-National Access programme will continue and hopefully lead to even greater integration and coordination of the participating telescopes. At present the proposals for  time at all the optical telescopes in  the network  are being reviewed together by a single international Time Allocation Committee (TAC) to ensure network-wide competition and uniform review criteria. In due course multi messenger proposals involving radio telescopes which formed part of Radionet will be invited. Purely radio proposals are solicited via a different mechanism described elsewhere.

The network comprises 14 distinct telescopes in a size range from 0.6 to 10 metres. These offer a mixture of classically scheduled PI projects, some queue scheduled observing where this is a normal operational mode of the telescope in question and a number of robotic telescopes well suited to both monitoring and quick reaction alert type observations.

Note there is an indepentent access programme operated by the Europlanet network which offers a different telescope suite for solar system projects and which operates in parallel to OPTICON (More Information)

TNA Map

The process is open to all European Union astronomers, and to non-EU astronomers if certain conditions are met, provided that they do not have automatic access to the facilities via national mechanisms. Proposals are ranked on scientific merit but special consideration is given to proposers who have no suitable national facilities which they can use.

There are two calls for proposals each year.

The calls generally open at the start of February and August.

The WP leader is John Davies

The final call for Trans-National Access to optical telescopes was 2021B and closed on the 1st March 2021. All OPTICON TNA activity has now transferred to the ORP.

Contact

John K. Davies (STFC) -

Previous Calls


The previous H2020 call for proposals are listed below for information only:

Call 2021B - Report from 2021B CTAC [PDF / 346 KB]

Call 2021A - Report from 2021A CTAC [PDF / 64 KB]

Call 2020B - Report from 2020B CTAC [PDF / 70 KB]

Call 2020A - Report from 2020A CTAC [PDF / 70 KB]

Call 2019B - Report from 2019B CTAC [PDF / 44 KB]

Call 2019A - Report from 2019A CTAC [PDF / 62 KB]

Call 2018B - Report from 2018B TAC [PDF / 60 KB]

Call 2018A

Call 2017B