The goal of this project is to provide a first experience of a fundamental activity for every observer in astronomy: to apply for telescope time. In the process of writing this proposal, you will learn to make a compelling scientific case to obtain observational data in order to solve a particular problem in observational cosmology, and to design the instrumental setup required for such observations.

The problem to be solved is to measure the value of the Hubble constant using observations of Cepheids in the nearby galaxy M100 with the HST. You can use the following paper as a reference:

``FINAL RESULTS FROM THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE KEY PROJECT TO MEASURE THE HUBBLE CONSTANT''
Freeman et al., 2001, ApJ, 553, p47-72.

You may find Section 2 of this paper particularly useful when preparing your proposal. However, I emphasise that the writing of the proposal must be your own.

Below you will find a description of the different parts of the observing proposal you will have to submit.

• Title Page (1 page):
  • Title
  • Principal Investigator
  • Affiliation (including email)
  • Abstract (20 lines maximum)

• Scientific Justification (3 pages, including References and Figures)
  • Background
    • What is the question to be addresed?
    • Why is it important?
    • Previous work on this problem.
  • Proposal
    • What are the proposed observations?
    • Why HST?
    • How will these observations solve the problem?

• Technical Justification (2 pages, including Figures)
  • Description of the observational problem
    • What is the apparent magnitude? In which band?
    • How many bands are required?
    • How many points are required to map the light curve? What time interval?
  • Instrumental Setup
    • Which instrument?
    • Which filters?
    • What are coordinates of the field?
    • What is the exposure time per observation? What is the total time requested? (Use the ETC at the STScI web page: http://www.stsci.edu/hst/)