PESSTO and BLP

For the first three months of PESSTO (188D.3003; April, August, September 2012), the Benetti Large Program (BLP; 184.D1140) and PESSTO will run side-by-side. In each case, the first block of 4 nights is officially BLP, and the last two blocks of 3 nights each are officially PESSTO. The two PIs and the PESSTO Science Board have agreed the following plan for those months:

• • We run logistically as full PESSTO, i.e., One observing team per month. Stefano Valenti plus one other person will do the April run.

  • The BLP has access to 4 nights of time during each run, and they are in control of targets to be observed. These nights are now fixed: 1st and 4th nights of the first run, and the last night on each of the other two runs.

  • BLP has proprietary data, so any of their own follow-up targets that they observe on the official BLP 4N run they can keep proprietary. Any PESSTO observations on official BLP nights will be public as per the PESSTO policy.

  • But any BLP follow-up targets taken during the official PESSTO 2x3 nights will be subject to the PESSTO policies

  • New targets which are classified by PESSTO time or BLP time, and which meet the PESSO science goals, will be treated as PESSTO science targets, i.e., we won't run competing BLP and PESSTO programmes.