Cycle II

This wiki-page contains all the relevant information for the observing Cycle 2 (2024-2025) including useful information for proposal drafting.

Editors of this page: A. Carosi (LST-1 PHYS Coordinator), P. Bordas (LST-1 Deputy PHYS Coordinator)

Proposal Preparation

Observation Cycle: II
Type of Proposals: LST-1 Mono
Start of Observation Cycle: end of March 2024 (officially March 27th, 2024)
Number of available hours: 500h (dark time)
Proposal template: https://www.overleaf.com/read/xfqxctbgwncm#a23f60
Deadline: 23:00 CET on February 16th, 2024

Non-Disclosure Agreement: Only to be used for non-LST members on LST proposals: google drive link

The scientific goal of the proposal should be achievable using only LST data. Please also remember, commissioning is very important during this period and all commissioning tasks take priority over scientific data taking.

All LST proposals must be led by LST members (ie the Principle Investigator and responsible person for the proposal) and are inherently LST projects. External scientists are allowed to be included on LST proposals and their participation should be justified in the proposal. They are allowed to analyze LST data beyond (and including) DL3. They will also be required to sign an NDA to ensure no results spread outside of LST and to satisfy the MAGIC+LST MOU which requires "that such information will be treated confidentially". Results that are suitably advanced can be shared to CTAC PWG or in publications/conference contributions, in accordance with the LST Data Access and Publication Policy. If a proposal does plan to have external scientists included, contact relevant PWG leads to sign the NDA.

Useful Material

To determine your chances of detections, use the sensitivity curves in the Performance paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.12960.

For your convenience, the usable plots for sensitivity are as follows:

Diff. Sensitivity (C.U. units - as from performance paper)

Diff. Sensitivity (cgs units - convoluted with MAGIC Crab Spectrum - by Ruben)

Diff. Sensitivity for different integration times (cgs units - by S. Nozaki)

Sensitivity curves for different integration times have been evaluated by S. Nozaki and are also available in csv: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12LXL6Muz05J5q7hQ0YpqSzGPi6BeDVrY?usp=sharing
At the same link you can also find the notebook to convert from C.U. to Flux (cgs)

To calculate LST-1 sensitivity you might also refer to the notebook here: https://github.com/cta-observatory/cta-lstchain/blob/main/notebooks/calculate_sensitivity_from_Crab.ipynb

An LST Source Simulator has been created by S. Nozaki and is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15IuhFh71UdMToCdhQFUe7VlMmxea7iu3/view?usp=sharing

The visibility of the source from the LST-1 site can be evaluated with publicly available visibility tools at http://catserver.ing.iac.es/staralt/ and/or http://tevcat2.uchicago.edu/tools.

Proposal Evaluation

Introduction

The cycle will officially cover the time period from 2024 March 28 to 2025 March 11 and will account for approximately 500 hours of observation time. The 500 hours is determined from the average number of dark hours in a cycle (roughly 1000 hours) subtracting the 500 hours of time given to MAGIC for joint observations. Since several of the proposals have MAGIC equivalent proposals, the ownership and actual non-overlapping observation time is difficult to determine. In such cases, negotiations between MAGIC and LST will take place to determine ownership of data and therefore which proposal the time should be subtracted from.

As for the first observation cycle, also cycle II will see the overlap of regular data taking with commissioning tasks. The latter will in any case take priority over scientific operations. Despite the fact that some of the proposed sources will be observed in parallel with MAGIC, the scientific goal of the LST Mono proposals should be achievable using only LST data. 27 proposals were submitted divided within the different physics working groups as follow: 12 for the GAL WG, 10 for the EGAL WG, 4 for the TRAN WG and 1 for the FUND WG.

The submitted proposals represent an oversubscription of ~2.6 (approximately 1270 hours of both regular observations and 2/3rds of ToO time).

Evaluation

The LPPB includes, for this cycle, the following members:

Evaluation meeting will be held on 2024, TBD.

Proposals and Instructions for Observers

EGAL01: Constraining short-term variability of PG 1553+113 in high emission state (PI: Elisa Prandini)
EGAL02: Observation of a peculiar blazar 1ES 0502+675 (PI: Abhradeep Roy)
EGAL03: Observation of the IXPE extreme blazars 1ES 1101-232 and RGB J0710+591: probing the mechanisms behind highly efficient particle acceleration in jets (PI: Jorge Otero-Santos)
EGAL05: Observations of flaring and high state γ-NLS1s with LST-1 (PI: Stefano Vercellone)
EGAL06: Observations of galaxy clusters: Coma Cluster (PI: Mireia Nievas Rosillo)
EGAL07: ToO observation of FSRQ based on Fermi high-energy photons (PI: Seiya Nozaki)
EGAL08: Probing Cosmic Ray Acceleration and Neutrino Production in NGC 1068 through Multi-year Observations (PI: Koji Noda)
EGAL09: Monitoring of PKS 2155-304 (PI: Lisa Nikolić)
EGAL10: Monitoring of classical radio galaxies with LST-1 (PI: Mireia Nievas Rosillo)
EGAL11: Target of Opportunity observations on AGN with LST-1 (PI: David Sanchez)
FUND01: Dark Matter searches at the recently discovered UMa3/U1 (PI: Michele Doro)
GAL01: Follow-up of unidentified LHAASO sources in the vicinity of HE pulsars and/or SNRs: 1LHAASO J1852+0050u (PI: Enrique Mestre)
GAL02: Follow-up of unidentified LHAASO sources in the vicinity of HE pulsars and/or SNRs: 1LHAASO J1906+0712 (PI: Enrique Mestre)
GAL03: Study of sub-PeV Cosmic-Ray Acceleration through the Galactic Center Diffuse Ridge Emission (PI: Shotaro Abe)
GAL04: Evolved SN 1006: newly discovered GeV-emitting SNR G17.8+16.7 (PI: Hideaki Katagiri)
GAL05: Drift-scan observations of the Cygnus cocoon (PI: Ievgen Vovk)
GAL06: Target of Opportunity observations of Galactic Transient sources (PI: Alicia López-Oramas)
GAL07: The complex region surrounding 1LHAASO J1928+1746u: discovering the hidden PeVatron engine (PI: Antonio Tutone)
GAL08: The periastron passage of the colliding wind binary WR140: the first CWB VHE emitter in the Northern hemisphere? (PI: Alicia López-Oramas)
GAL09: Identification, localization and modeling of the PeVatron candidate 1LHAASO J0056+6346u (PI: Giorgio Pirola)
GAL10: Search for Very High Energy pulsed emission from PSR J2021+3651 (PI: Alvaro Mas-Aguilar)
GAL11: Detecting the relativistic jets of the microquasar V4641 with the LST-1 (PI: Daniela Hadasch)
GAL12: Study of the star cluster NGC 6611 with the LST-1 (PI: Gaia Verna)
TRAN01: Spotting the GRB counterpart to gravitational wave detections during the second half of O4 (PI: Monica Seglar-Arroyo)
TRAN02: Gamma-ray bursts observations (PI: Edna Ruiz-Velasco)
TRAN03: Follow-up Observations of Fast Radio Bursts (PI: Alessandro Carosi)
TRAN04: Neutrino ToO (NToO) Observations (PI: Koji Noda)