ESA Science & Technology - Suzaku 5th Announcement of Opportunity

Update: 19 March 2010 - European Suzaku AO-5 results are now available
For details please see the link in the right-hand menu.

Update: 24 November 2009 - Suzaku EAO-5 is closed
The 5th European AO for observing time on the Japanese/US Suzaku X-ray observatory closed on 20 November. A total of 30 proposals were received corresponding to an over-subscription in time of 3.9. The results of the AO will be announced in March 2010.

Update: 15 October 2009 - Proposal Submission
The Suzaku ESA AO-5 Proposal Submission Tool, for principal investigators belonging to institutes within ESA Member States only, is now online at

 http://www.rssd.esa.int/RPS/SUZAKU/RPS.pl

Interested parties are invited to take note of the letter announcing EAO-5 from the Director of Science and Robotic Exploration (reproduced below and available to download as a pdf file from the documentation links) and the ESA Suzaku AO-5 documentation (available to download as a pdf file from the documentation links). Additional useful links are provided under Suzaku ESA AO-5 Information.

Letter announcing EAO-5 from the Director of Science and Robotic Exploration

Dear Colleague,

I am pleased to invite you to respond to the "Announcement of Opportunity" to submit proposals for observations to be performed with Suzaku.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), through the European Space Agency, invites participation of European scientists in the Suzaku X-ray astronomy programme, specifically in the Japanese portion of the observing time. Suzaku is a collaborative Japanese and U.S. mission which was launched on 10 July 2005 and has since been successfully performing astronomical observations using the X-ray CCD cameras and Hard X-ray Detector.

This letter is to announce the fifth European Announcement of Opportunity (EAO-5) and to solicit proposals from scientists belonging to institutions within ESA Member States for observing time in the portion reserved for the ESA-Japan programme. The EAO-5 observing time is planned to start in April 2010 and last for 12 months. The aim of the programme is to maximize the scientific return from the mission through co-operation between European and Japanese scientists. Thus, European proposals are expected to involve one or more Japanese co-investigators. If the European proposers cannot identify Japanese co-investigators at the time of proposal submission, JAXA will help assigning Japanese co-investigators later.

Approximately 8% of the observing time will be allocated to successful proposals from ESA Member States. It should be noted that whilst hereby facilitating access, ESA cannot provide funding for participation in this programme, full financial support must therefore be obtained through the usual national channels.

Proposals to participate in the Suzaku EAO-5 must be prepared in accordance with information which will be available electronically from ESA at:

http://www.rssd.esa.int/Suzaku

and must be submitted electronically to ESA by 16:30 CET on 20 November 2009 at the latest with a copy to the relevant national funding institutions.

Proposals will be peer reviewed by an ESA established Time Allocation Committee and the top ranking proposals, in order of priority, will be forwarded to JAXA. It should be noted that more proposals will be forwarded for consideration than can be accommodated. The final selection of European proposals will be made by the Suzaku proposal merging committee. It is expected that the selection of European Guest Investigators will be announced in around March 2010.

I would appreciate if you would circulate this Announcement to interested colleagues within your institute.

Yours sincerely,

Prof D. J. Southwood
Director of Science and Robotic Exploration