Amendment to the RXTE Cycle 5 Announcement

[Alan Smale <alan@osiris.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

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               Amendment to the RXTE Cycle 5 Announcement 
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   All potential RXTE proposers should read the following amendments
to NASA Announcement AN 99-OSS-02, which solicits observing proposals
for the RXTE Cycle 5 Guest Observer Program:


(i)  Supplemental information relative to Appendix C, Section C.1.1,
General Observing Parameters:

"Cycle 5 proposers are specifically encouraged to consider projects
that would profit uniquely from large amounts of observing time, to
enable investigations of significantly greater scope than those
possible in the first four RXTE observing cycles.  Accordingly, large
proposals, defined as those that request observing times of 500 ksec
or more, will be given special consideration and are allowed 6 pages
for the Scientific Problem and Technical Feasibility section of the
proposal (see Appendix C.2.2.2)."


(ii) Supplemental information relative to Appendix C, Section C.2.1.1,
Proposal Content:


"6. PCA Constraints

As noted on the RXTE GOF Web site (http://rxte.gsfc.nasa.gov), the PCA
is currently being operated with reduced duty cycles for three out of
the five PCU detectors. Proposers for Cycle 5 should calculate exposure
times and discuss technical feasibility with an expectation of using an
average of three PCUs. If special circumstances warrant or require the
use of four or five PCUs for an observation (e.g., faint source
spectroscopy or investigations of weak QPO signals), then a quantative
justification must be clearly stated in the Technical Feasibility
section. (Although every effort will be made to fulfill requests for
more than three PCUs, operational limitations make it impossible to
guarantee that the requested number of PCUs will be available.) In
addition, it should be noted that some observations, especially those
for source monitoring, may be conducted with two PCUs, and proposers
should discuss the expected impact of this limitation on their
observing program."

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All other details of the RXTE Cycle 5 Announcment remain unchanged. In
case the due date is not already marked in your dayplanner in bright
red ink, here it is again: proposals for RXTE observing time are due

                     *********************
                     *  30th JULY, 1999  *
                     *********************

   The text of the Announcement, Appendices, and Amendment may be
obtained from the RXTE Guest Observer Facility pages at:

	http://rxte.gsfc.nasa.gov/
(select "Proposals and Planning Tools" -> "NASA Research Announcements")

   All questions should be directed to the usual address:

		xtehelp@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov



| Dr. Alan P. Smale                | xtehelp@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov (RXTE)|
| RXTE Guest Observer Facility     | alan@osiris.gsfc.nasa.gov (me)     |
| Code 662,  NASA/GSFC             | (301) 286-7063 (voice)             | 
| Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA         | (301) 286-1682 (FAX)               |
|              RXTE GOF homepage: http://rxte.gsfc.nasa.gov             |


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