Call for Proposals

The Istituto di Radioastronomia offers observing time at the  32-m radio telescope at Medicina.

The Medicina telescope is furnished with a suite of receivers between 1.4 and 8.9 GHz which can be connected to various backends. In addition to a state-of-the-art "total power" digital backend, a polarimeter system with 400 MHz bandwidth can be attached to any available frontend. Spectroscopic observations can either be done with ARCOS, a 4096-channel autocorrelator with a maximum instantaneous bandwidth of 160 MHz and a maximum resolution of 40 Hz (8.4 m/s at 1.4 GHz) or a spectral analyser with an input bandwidth between 0.5 and 20 MHz, a temporal resolution of one spectrum/msec and a frequency resolution between 512 and 131,072 channels. Pulsar observations can be performed with a 2 x 64 x 1 MHz filter bank (left and right-hand polarisation). Receiver frequencies can be switched within a few seconds. 

Note that in the next semester no 22 - GHz receiver system can be offered.

In addition to all standard radioastronomical frequencies the telescope allows observations of methanol lines in the 6.6-GHz band, which is however subject to serious RFI.  Visiting astronomers can also install their own backends.

Proposals for observing time in the period of 1st December 2011 to 31st May 2012 should include the IRA cover form. The package for proposal preparation can be downloaded from the URL in the frame to the left. They should be sent by 1st November 2011 to the Istituto di Radioastronomia following the instructions on the given URL.

Furthermore, the institute invites submission of target-of-opportunity proposals at any time. These proposals should be submitted using the official proposal form. Evaluation and observations will be carried out rapidly if the telescope is available. Please check the telescope schedule prior to submission of such a proposal. The antenna at Noto is currently undergoing major maintenance work and cannot be used for astronomical observation during the next semester.
Observers with specific scheduling requirements are requested to justify these in the proposal. Please note that due to the increasing time requests, too tight scheduling constraints cannot be satisfied in all cases.

The maintenance work of the Noto telescope has been started. If the Noto antenna becomes available during the following semester a specific call will be issued.

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For any publications based on observations with the IRA telescopes please use the following acknowledgement:

"Based on observations with the Medicina (Noto) telescope operated by INAF - Istituto di Radioastronomia"

and please send a copy of any paper using the IRA telescopes data to Jan Brand - e-mail: brand (at) ira.inaf.it