Observing Proposals for MMT, Magellan and FLWO telescopes

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Create and manage Observing Proposals for

• FLWO: 1.2-meter and 1.5-meter Telescopes
• MMT 6.5-meter Telescope
• Magellan 6.5-meter Baade and Clay Telescopes

To apply for CfA time on these telescopes, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithonian must be your primary affiliation and you must be resident at a CfA facility. CfA staff on leave or sabbatical may also apply for time. Please

• Check our proposal policies.
• Check the instrument status to make sure the one you want to use is available.
• Check the observing policies for the different telescopes.
• You will have access to all CfA proposals previously entered to this system.
• Changes may be made to any of your current proposals until the deadline. There is a "Submit" button now. Only submitted proposal will be taken into account.
• Information from a web form is immediately used to build a proposal cover page and errors are reported back to you so that they may be corrected before the proposal is finalized.
• You can view any of your proposals as Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files the way the TAC will see them.
• The TAC ranks submitted proposals 3-4 weeks after the proposal deadline.
• Telescope schedules should be available approximately one month before the beginning of each semester.
• If you are new to TDCApply, please read this help page.
• Please notice the CfA-Privacy Statement
• If the online help doesn't answer your questions, email them to the Telescope Data Center Staff.

Changes

• 03/21/2024:
• Passwords have a minimul length of 12 and will expire after 180 days as required by Smithonian Institution Password Regulations. On login you might be asked to change your password
• The navigation bar is sticking to the top now and does not scroll out on long forms / lists
• The controls for nights now have an increment of 0.5 (was 0.1)
• Magnitudes have an increment of 0.1 (was 1)
• 09/23/2021: Institutions buying observing nights can now register and add their proposals.
• 05/05/2021: Automatic emails are sent to proposers when their proposals have been accepted for scoring. FAQ added to Help
• 09/03/2021: Submit and clone link added to "Your proposals". Free text "Instrument config." replaces instrument mode, grid, central wavelength and slitwith. Abstract and Instrument config have a word counter at the lower right.
• 02/09/2021: submit reminder added to "Your proposals" and proposal update page
• 02/08/2021: added telescope and instrument to "Your proposals", instrument mode is no longer enforced