NOAO received 369 proposals for the 1999B semester, including 21 proposals for Survey Programs. 57% of our investigators took advantage of our Web proposal form to submit their proposals. This was the first semester that a proposal could request telescope time at both CTIO and KPNO, and 10% of all programs submitted did so. Among the regular (non-Survey) programs, 42% were in extragalactic subject areas, 53% in galactic subject areas, and 5% in solar system areas. The most popular areas were stars, stellar populations, active galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and resolved galaxies.
An additional 16 proposals were received from Chilean astronomers and forwarded to the Chilean national time assignment committee for time allocated as part of Chile's 10% share at Cerro Tololo. The proposals recommended by the Chilean national TAC will be forwarded to CTIO for scheduling.
Most proposals (71%) included figures; we received and processed 537 separate postscript files. The average proposal length for regular (non-survey) proposals was 6.9 pages, an increase of 1.3 pages per proposal due to the new proposal form. Survey proposals were longer, averaging 12.2 pages per proposal.
The NOAO Proposal Team