Guest Investigator Program

The Swift Guest Investigator Program is an annual announcement of opportunity soliciting proposals from the community for research relevant to the Swift mission. The GI programs begin at the start of each April and last for approximately 12 months. Observing time is available for scientists at both US and non-US institutions, although only those Principal Investigators at US institutions will be eligible for funding from NASA. No funding is provided for the fill-in category.

Cycle 11 results published

GI Cycle 11 - deadline passed

Swift provides an opportunity for simultaneous optical to hard X-ray observations of targets, allowing broad-band analysis. The X-ray Telescope is specifically designed to choose the best operating mode for the X-ray flux of the object in question.

In Cycle 11, PIs interested in combining Swift and XMM-Newton, Chandra or INTEGRAL data can again submit a single proposal to XMM-Newton AO-13, the Chandra Call for Proposals or INTEGRAL AO-13. There is also a new joint Swift/NRAO program.

In this cycle, there will be up to 2 Ms available for non-ToO targets, 1 Ms for Large Programs, 1 Ms for ToOs and 1 Ms for fill-in targets. ToOs for GRBs detected with instruments other than Swift (e.g., MAXI, Fermi) are included in this time.

Requests for fill-in observations cannot be time-constrained (e.g. coordinated with ground- or space-based facilities), although both ToOs and non-ToOs may be, provided the window for the observation exceeds 3 hours. Up to 500 time-constrained observations will be accepted during this cycle.

The duration of an observation is limited to between 1 and 40 ks, although several observations may be requested.

See the NASA page for more details (FAQs), or contact the Leicester Swift help-desk.

List of Cycle 10 (2014-2015) accepted targets

Swift support

Helpdesk

Guest Investigator Program

GI Cycle 11 - deadline passed