The deadline for proposal submission for Period 115 (1 April 2025 - 30 September 2025) was 26 September 2024. 763 valid proposals were submitted. On the VLT, the most demanded ESO instrument was MUSE with a request of 233 nights, followed by ESPRESSO with 214 nights, and XSHOOTER with 182 nights. HARPS/NIRPS on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope was the most demanded instrument at La Silla, with a combined request of 202 nights. The figure above shows the time request since Period 62, for Paranal (VLT/I), La Silla, and APEX. The fluctuations since Period 106 are partly because Large Programmes are offered only in even periods since P106. The highest peak in P106 is due to the extension of the proposal submission deadline during the pandemic.
ESO Period 115 Proposal Submission Statistics
Published: 31 Oct 2024
In Paranal, the telescope with the highest oversubscription is Yepun (UT4), with a total request of 418 nights, followed by Melipal (UT3; 380 nights). 15% of programmes requested Visitor Mode at the VLT.
In P115 ESO received 4 VLTI/I-ALMA joint proposals and one VLT/I-XMM joint proposal.
The distributed peer review (DPR) will evaluate proposals requesting a total telescope time of 16h or less, which is 45% of submitted proposals in P115, covering around 15% of all the requested time. The rest of the proposals will be reviewed by the Observing Programmes Committee.
The percentages of submitted proposals across science categories were:
- Cosmology and Intergalactic Medium 8%
- Galaxies 26%
- Interstellar Medium, Star Formation, and Planetary Systems 33%
- Stellar Evolution 33%
Proposals are being reviewed by the expert panels or in the distributed peer review (DPR) scheme, under the oversight of the Observing Programmes Committee. Proposing teams can expect to be informed of the outcome of the review process by mid-January 2025.