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A Memo from the Director about Warm Spitzer opportunities is here.

The Cycle-5 Call for Proposals is now closed.

Spot and Leopard (v18) are current software versions.

NEW SPITZER OBSERVERS START HERE: Quick-Start Proposal Submission Guide. For a longer cookbook-style document, start with the Observation Planning Cookbook... how to go from an idea to a set of fully-functional Astronomical Observation Requests (AORs) for your Spitzer proposal! The acronyms list might also be helpful. Professional astronomer new to the infrared? Start with the Infrared Compendium.

- The Basics

At minimum, there are five documents needed to plan, prepare and submit a Spitzer observing proposal:

You will also need the Spot software:
  • Getting the Software
  • Spot Sample Files: AORs * Targets
  • Spot Pocket Guide
  • Spot hints, tips, tricks

    • - What has Spitzer observed so far?

    Also see the Performance Estimation Tool (the PET has sensitivities; there are other tools too), the Proposal Submission Guide, the Observation Planning Cookbook (includes specific examples with AORs!), and even more stuff listed below...

    - Additional Useful Information and Spitzer Tools

    Notes on IRAC High Precision Photometric Observations -- 13 Nov 07

    Memo on WISE and Spitzer Performance -- 3 Apr 07

    Memo on IRAC signal-to-noise ratio calculation -- 12 Feb 07

    Memo on AKARI and Spitzer Performance -- 9 Feb 07

    Memo on Spitzer pointing over long integrations -- 3 Feb 06

    The following items are also available on the left-hand (grey) portion of every SSC web page:

    - Solar System and Extrasolar Planet Observations

    If Spot does not already have an ephemeris for your desired target, it will now automatically query Horizons to obtain the ephemeris in real time, which typically takes a few seconds. You no longer need to request loading of a new ephemeris via the Helpdesk. Please note that a visibility window must be requested in Spot, either interactively or in batch mode, to trigger loading of the new ephemeris. Although some of our documentation states that ephemeris loading will occur when AOR time estimates are requested for a new target, that is currently not the case. We are working to fix this bug for future Spot releases.

    - Science User Support

    - Useful Proposal Preparation Resources Beyond the SSC

    - FAQ / Search this site / Help Desk

    SPITZER HOME || SPITZER SCIENCE || INSTRUMENTS || SCIENCE USER SUPPORT || SEARCH

    help@spitzer.caltech.edu
    http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/propkit/
    This file was last modified on Fri Jun 20 11:41:04 2008.

    California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA