XMM-Newton Announcement of Opportunity

This came by my inbox today:

I am very pleased to invite you to respond to the ninth "Announcement of Opportunity" to submit proposals for observations to be performed with the XMM-Newton observatory. XMM-Newton is the second cornerstone of ESA's Horizon 2000 Science Programme. It was launched by an Ariane 5 launcher on the 10th of December 1999 and offers astronomers a unique opportunity to perform high throughput non-dispersive spectroscopic imaging in the energy range from 0.2 keV to 12 keV (European Photon Imaging Camera; EPIC) and medium resolution dispersive spectroscopy (Reflection Grating Spectrometer; RGS) in the energy range from 0.4 keV to 2.2 keV. In addition it provides simultaneous optical/UV observations with a co-aligned telescope (Optical Monitor; OM).
This Announcement solicits proposals to be carried out in the period from May 2010 to April 2011. Proposers from all over the world are welcome to participate. All proposals will be subject to independent peer review by the XMM-Newton Observing Time Allocation Committee (OTAC). Potential proposers are expected to prepare and submit proposals in electronic form, by the deadline given below, using the XMM-Newton Remote Proposal Submission (RPS) software.

Full details are here:

docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4Kok-AsJbl...hkYjQxMTAyNTQw&hl=en

Would be great if IFAS made a submission.
Anyone have any suggestions for a proposal?

Regards,

Michael.

I wonder how much money Ireland gave to ESA? The odds of getting time on the instrument is probably related to this figure-would be a laugh though to put in a proposal. Not too familiar with X-ray astronomy.

I wonder if they'd take a picture of my house? Might save on a BER Cert...

dmcdona wrote:

I wonder if they'd take a picture of my house? Might save on a BER Cert...

:laugh: I know exactly what you mean.

In the absence of any specific area of research that clearly needs empirical data I'd suggest the following genaral area of research:-

Hubble acquired the Deep Field image resolving an estimateed 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution in it's field of view.

If we were to repeat this exercise in X-Ray then we would have a signifiacnt sample size of galaxies to correlate hubble imaged galaxies with their X-Ray energy output and maybe have a statistical measure of what percentage of galaxies have a black hole at their centre - and possibly determining when black holes are formed in galaxies (at what age do they acquire them).

It would be expensive in allocated telescope time (I beleive hubble was many weeks of imaging time) - but I feel that this would be very enlightening.

Mark

Unless you're affiliated to a research group (or there's specific outreach time), then the chances are slim to none. It's hard enough for us pros to get time on these things, let alone the amateur community - and the TACs are extremely political. So getting time is a hard fought process.

Time allocated on XMM is peer-reviewed, and not limited to ESA member countries nor their fiscal contributions. Given the small pro community in Ireland, we've done quite well out of XMM - at least we did when last I worked in Ireland

Spitzer was the worst. Very bad memories of TACs.