Gravitational Wave Event Proposals

SALT has set aside some time for proposals covering gravitational wave events. Such proposals can be submitted by any member of the SALT partnership.

How to submit a gravitational wave event proposal

If you are a member of the SALT partnership –

  1. Make sure you have version 5.3 (or higher) of the PIPT installed.
  2. Launch the PIPT and choose the menu item File > New proposal.
  3. When prompted for the proposal type, choose the option “Gravitational Wave Event”.
  4. Fill in the proposal details, as you would for other SALT proposals, and submit the proposal.

Contrary to Director’s Discretionary Time proposals, you do not have to get prior approval before submitting the proposal.

If you do not belong to a SALT partner, please contact salthelp@salt.ac.za and we’ll gladly put you in touch with our gravitational wave event group members.

Receiving notifications and commenting on proposals

A notification is sent out to a dedicated mailing list whenever a gravitational wave event proposal is (re)submitted. In order to sign up on this mailing list, go to

https://www.salt.ac.za/wm/GW/

and sign up.

If you submit a gravitational wave event proposal, you are automatically signed up on the list.

You may send comments about a proposal to the mailing list. The form for this is located on the proposal’s page in the Web Manager. For example, if the proposal has the code 2018-2-GWE-042, you would find the code at

https://www.salt.ac.za/wm/proposal/2018-2-GWE-042

Data access

All data taken for a gravitational wave event proposal is immediately made available to the subscribed SALT community using the gravitational wave user’s username and password. You can find these at

https://www.salt.ac.za/wm/GW/

after subscribing to the mailing list. Full access to the data is authorized only for members of the SALT partnership subscribed to the mailing list. These users may however share their data freely with whomever they choose (within and without the SALT partnership), although collaborations within the partnership are strongly encouraged.

Publications

All publications must follow our Science Paper Acknowledgement rules, as stated here: https://astronomers.salt.ac.za/data/acknowledgements/.

Co-authorship of any papers resulting from gravitational wave event proposal data will be decided exclusively by the specific members of the collaboration contributing to a specific paper. In particular,

  • Subscription to the mailing list does not ensure co-authorship.
  • Submitting the proposal does not ensure co-authorship.
  • Observing the data does not ensure co-authorship.

More details

Please refer to the policy document for more details. Don’t hesitate to email salthelp@salt.ac.za with any questions you might have.