Following a recommendation by ESO Scientific and Technical Committee (STC), we are issuing a call for letters of intent for public surveys with KMOS.

A public survey is understood to be an observing programme in which the investigators commit to produce and make publicly available, within a defined time, a fully reduced and scientifically usable data set that is likely to answer a major scientific question, be of general use and of broad interest to the astronomical community. The raw data are public immediately. A survey is envisaged to be an observing programme requesting up to 200 observing nights to be allocated over six semesters. Observations will be carried out in service mode. The KMOS instrument will be offered with a maximum of 20 arms and only in individual arm modes, i.e., no mosaic modes. For more information, please visit the KMOS News pages (https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/paranal/instruments/kmos/news.html) which we constantly update with the latest status of the instrument.

The letters of intent should include the following items:

• Title and Abstract
• Principal Investigator (PI) and a list of co-investigators
• Scientific rationale (2 pages)
• Observing strategy (1 page)
• Estimated observing time, including the distribution of observing time over the semesters
• Required observing conditions (lunar phase, image quality, sky transparency)
• Description of the responsibilities within the proposing team (1 page)
• Description of the data products and justification of their legacy value (1 page). Please note that the legacy value is an important aspect of public surveys, which is carefully considered by the review panel.

A LaTeX template for the letter of intent is available here.

A pdf example of the letter of intent template is available here.

A Word template for the letter of intent is available here

The deadline for submission of letters of intent for public surveys with KMOS is 

15 October 2024 12:00 CEST.

Letters should be submitted only in PDF format to KMOSsurveys@eso.org . The Public Survey Panel (PSP) will review the letter of intent and suggest integrations and possible merging of projects with similar aims and observing strategies. Recommended surveys will be invited to submit proposals for P116 on 15 February 2025, with start of observations in October 2025.

The ESO Director General will select the public surveys based on the recommendations of the PSP and the OPC, which will evaluate their scientific excellence, and on their technical feasibility with KMOS and tools. The selected teams will be invited to prepare a survey management plan, whose approval by ESO is mandatory before final acceptance of a public survey.

Please consider the following conditions:

• No proprietary time will be granted; raw data will become immediately available via the ESO Science Archive Facility.
• The ESO Science Archive Facility will be the repository of the survey products and provide the primary access of these products to the ESO community.  Survey data products are to be prepared according to the ESO science data product standard and submitted in agreement with the policies for ESO Phase 3. The teams will be responsible for the processing and validating the data products. Regular survey data product releases are expected every year.
  
• Progress of the approved KMOS surveys will be reviewed regularly by ESO and the PSP. Corrective steps will need to be identified in cases where the survey execution is delayed, or the data product delivery schedule cannot be maintained.