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Is it worth it preparing any Phase 2 material for C-ranked proposals? ​ - Knowledgebase / How to prepare your observations (Phase 2) / Service Mode - ESO Operations Helpdesk

Is it worth it preparing any Phase 2 material for C-ranked proposals? ​

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Is it worth it preparing any Phase 2 material for C-ranked proposals?


C-ranked programmes have a good chance to be observed and it is always worth preparing the observations.

ESO selects class C programmes from those that did not get a high enough rating to be above the time allocation cutoff line, but whose constraints made them schedulable under a very wide range of conditions (i.e., in intervals of bad seeing, with moon, or under poor sky transparency conditions). Higher rated runs normally have more stringent constraints and, when the conditions are below average, only class C runs may be executable. Due to the high pressure factor at ESO telescopes, the scientific quality of class C runs is normally still very high, and experience shows that Service Mode class C programmes, which would not have been scheduled in classical Visitor Mode, have produced very valuable scientific results.