Asgard Instrument Suite

Community Access

The Asgard consortium is committed to enabling community access after commissioning. In this page you will find guidance for each ESO period call for proposals and other ways to get involved.

Asgard CfP (ESO P117)

The Asgard consortium would like to involve members of the broad astronomical community in the exploitation of the BIFROST (JH-band), Heimdallr (K-band), and NOTT (L-band nulling) visitor instruments at VLTI. The goal is to maximise the science return of Asgard by exploiting its unique capabilities in science areas that are complementary to its core science areas. These core areas include:

• GAIA binary follow-up (Heimdallr and BIFROST)
• Spin-orbit alignments of binaries and planet-host stars (BIFROST)
• Accretion and ejection/mass loss around young stars, evolved stars and AGNs (BIFROST)
• Exoplanets with dual-field interferometry (BIFROST)
• Young planets (NOTT and BIFROST)
• Exozodiacal dust (NOTT)

We solicit ideas for science observations outside of these themes, following a 2-stage proposal process:

1. Submission of an 'Expression of Interest' form to an Asgard-internal sifting panel that will select the proposal ideas that (a) seem technically feasible, (b) make the best use of Asgard's unique capabilities, and (c) show the best complementarity with the Asgard core science themes. Submissions have to use the Asgard template form (will be provided on this website), and need to be submitted to eoi@asgard-vlti.org 2 weeks before the ESO P117 proposal deadline (i.e. by 2025 September 9th, noon CEST). Later submissions will not be accepted. The template form is being prepared and will be made available on this website by August 31st.
2. The sift panel will inform applicants within 4 days whether their submission is selected, and whether they can prepare a full ESO proposal that needs to be submitted through the standard ESO submission system by the regular ESO proposal deadline.

In P117, Asgard commissioning will still be ongoing, so only a subset of the anticipated operational modes will be available, with conservative performance estimates on bright targets, and on best-effort basis. We anticipate that these performance numbers are for clear weather and median seeing. Given we will be observing in visitor mode, whether your observations are carried out will depend on weather on the nights of the visitor runs:

• Heimdallr (K-band, fringe tracking + visibility/closure phases, K_corr=9.5 with ATs, K_corr=11.5 with UTs). As we use the Baldr adaptive optics system, proposals with guide stars up to G=15 or G=14 within the full Coudé field are acceptable (it is only important that the correction is enough so our DMs aren't saturated).
• BIFROST (J and H-band, R=50, visibility/closure phases, only single-field/on-axis, H_corr=6 with ATs, H_corr=8 with UTs)
• NOTT (L-band, nulling, single-bracewell, contrast 1:1000, L_corr=5 with ATs)

The data recording will be carried out by consortium members in visitor mode. Given the current absence of funding for community support activities, the consortium will only be able to support a small number of exploratory community projects (maximum of order 20% of proposed time), so that the data recording can be combined with other commissioning and consortium observing activities. We particularly welcome submissions where the proposing team can contribute staff time and expertise on relevant methodology and data analysis efforts that might also benefit other users of the instrument suite, and expand offerings in the future.

Growing our Community

The Asgard community is growing. If you have expertise that you think we need and time to commit, please contact us!