Proposal Preparation and Submission

Telescope time for ESO telescopes at the La Silla Paranal Observatory is allocated twice a year in periods of 6 months. Allocation periods run from 1 October through 31 March, and from 1 April through 30 September. Applications for observing time on ESO telescopes may only be submitted electronically and only using the ESOFORM package.

The Call for Proposals describes the conditions under which observing time is offered on the ESO telescopes on the La Silla, Paranal, and Chajnantor (APEX) sites of the Observatory. The document is available in electronic form via this Web page.

The next deadline (for Period 83, 1 April 2009 - 30 September 2009 ) is:

1 October 2008

(12:00 noon, Central European Summer Time)

 

All users must log in to the User Portal in order to download the ESOFORM package and to submit proposals. In order to log in they MUST be registered and have an activated User Portal account.

  • Due to the procedures required to register on the ESO User Portal it is of utmost importance that proposals are submitted in a timely fashion.
  • ESO is allowing a category of proposals for Calibration Programmes. For more details please see the Call for Proposals.
  • In the proposal form you must identify institution codes instead of institution names for Co-Is. These codes can be selected from the pull down menus in the Institute Code Lists.

Applications for observation time for the ESO Telescopes have to be prepared using the ESOFORM package, and uploaded via the User Portal. More details are given below.

Please note that we are performing conformity checks on the submitted proposals. Hence, we strongly recommend proposers to read carefully the ESOFORM Users Manual and the examples provided in the template.

 

Call for Proposals for Period 83

Call for Proposals for Period 82

Proposal Submission

Applications for observation time at ESO Telescopes have to be prepared using only the latest ESOFORM package. Please read the ESOFORM Users Manual for details.


Please note that you require an ESO User Portal account in order to download and subsequently submit regular P83 proposals for usage of the ESO telescopes, DDT proposals (labelled as 81Z). You can download and submit proposals using the following link:

http://www.eso.org/UserPortal

Please note that each user is allowed to have only one User Portal account; multiple accounts should not be created or used by the same user. Failure to comply with this restriction may lead to rejection by ESO of the proposals of the offending PI.

In case you need assistance from ESO to prepare your proposal, please send an email to esoform@eso.org. If you do not receive an automatic acknowledgment within 4 hours, please contact opo@eso.org.

The address esoform@eso.org can be used for all questions and comments related to the ESOFORM package (how to prepare your proposal, what error messages really mean, etc.), as well as more general questions concerning instrument performance, Observatory policy, etc.

Proposal Preparation Tools

The following Proposal Preparation Tools are available: