The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), welcomes the submission of science proposals for the upcoming observing period scheduled from August 2024 to July 2025. Users of any nationality or affiliation are invited to submit proposals before the deadline at 16:00 UT on May 15, 2024, through the website http://fast.bao.ac.cn/proposal_submit (the system opened on April 6, 2024). Information on the techniques and current performance of the telescope are available at http://fast.bao.ac.cn. Note that only the 19-beam receiver is available for the upcoming observing period.

The FAST science operation covers both regular science programs and large programs. Please note that this call only solicits regular science proposals, which can each request up to 80 hours of observation time. It is anticipated that about 1,600 hours of observing time will be allocated to regular science programs. Any proposal should justify why FAST is necessary for the requested observations. Based on the statistics of the last observation period, the oversubscription rate is 5.6 on average, and reaches 7.1 for the LST range of 18 to 22 hours, which approximately corresponds to the Galactic plane time for FAST.

FAST started its full operation in January 2020, and is now completing its fourth science observing period. A list of previously accepted science proposals, including both regular science and large programs, can be found at https://fast.bao.ac.cn/cms/category/approved_projects_en/. Note that information on future approved proposals, including titles, PI names, abstracts, and scheduling priorities, will also be posted on the website. Science data obtained through a regular science program will have a proprietary period of 12 months. Please see the FAST Data Policy posted at https://fast.bao.ac.cn/cms/article/129/ for more details. To avoid duplication, proposers should consult the FAST archive at https://fast.bao.ac.cn/observation_log/observed_source_search before planning observations to check if any existing data meets their scientific goals.

Should you have any further question about the telescope operation and proposal submission, please contact us at fast-proposal-support@nao.cas.cn.

Source: FAST