Draft:  Conditions for use of GROND by non-MPE Max-Planck Institutes


General Remarks:

- GROND is an imaging instrument which allows simultaneous imaging in
  7 bands: Sloan griz in the optical and JHK in the NIR. GROND is permanently 
  mounted at the MPG/ESO 2.2m telescope on La Silla. Instrument switches
  between GROND and WFI/FEROS take of order 1 min. Details of the 
  instrument are described in [LINK - to be provided after acceptance
  of instrument paper by PASP].

- GROND has been developed and built by MPE Garching and the Thueringer
  Landessternwarte Tautenburg. Its main objective is to perform 
  follow-up observations of gamma-ray bursts. Gamma-ray burst
  observations are performed in a nearly-automatic fashion using
  the Rapid-Response Mode of ESO. GROND-observation triggers happening
  during MPG time are formally not counted as MPG time, but fall under an 
  ESO-MPE contract, and the corresponding time (15% of the telescope time) 
  is bought by MPE from ESO.

- GROND is not an official ESO instrument, and thus not freely offered
  during ESO time. Non-GRB observations can only be done during MPG time.

- GROND was built for automatic operation, and though it is using
  VLT-compliant observing blocks, usage in manual (visitor or service) 
  mode requires special provisions and knowledge. Thus, at present and
  also for the near-term future, only members of the GROND team will
  operate GROND.

- GROND is, in general, offered for use to any staff member of any 
  Max-Planck institute. Since it is presently in commissioning phase, 
  and in particular the photometric calibration not yet finished,
  we urge potential users for patience. We foresee MPE-supported 
  use of GROND on a shared risk basis starting in spring 2008.


Specific conditions

- Non-MPE astronomers are welcome to use GROND for their scientific projects
  (with the above caveat). Technically, this has to be done by applying via
  standard proposals for 2.2m observing time during MPG periods.

- The GROND team requests to be involved in any science topic which involves
  the use of the GROND instrument. The level of involvement will vary on 
  case by case, and is described below.  Jochen Greiner as representative 
  of the GROND team (jcg@mpe.mpg.de) should be contacted PRIOR to submitting 
  the proposal in order to discuss the involvement, and moreover
  agree on the feasibility, details of the execution of the observation
  and the delivery of the data. 

- MPE and Tautenburg have defined a number of high-priority non-GRB science 
  topics. If any of those topics is proposed by non-MPE astronomers, the
  GROND team reserves the right to refuse collaboration if the added value
  by non-MPE astronomers is considered to be not important for the project.
  In all other cases, the involvement of the GROND team can range from
  pure co-authorship (if the science topic is not covered by GROND interests)
  to various levels of collaboration on data acquisition, analysis and/or
  interpretation. For large programs which extend over several MPG periods,
  it may be useful to involve the GROND team already in the planning process.

- Once a proposal topic has been discussed with the GROND team, and the level 
  of collaboration of the GROND team has been defined, the actual proposal
  should be submitted following standard MPIA rules and deadlines. 

- After acceptance of the proposal, the GROND team should be contacted to
  agree on the execution of the program. In general, one member of the
  GROND team will perform the observations. The OBs should be prepared by
  the PI using p2pp, obeying the same deadline as for WFI/FEROS programs. 
  ESO will assign program-IDs for each accepted program. The GROND instrument
  package for p2pp has been delivered to ESO, so should be included in the
  next official p2pp release.

- Data are stored on a GROND computer on La Silla. In regular intervals, 
  data are shipped to Garching (via DVD or transportable disks). Since typical 
  projects do not fill a full night, but extend over several nights, sorting 
  of the data according to program-ID has to be done. This will be performed 
  at MPE Garching after data shipment. Data delivery to the PI will be done
  either via ftp, or DVDs. The whole process may easily take 4 weeks or more,
  so again patience is requested.

- The GROND team has established a data reduction pipeline which presently
  is also being finetuned. This data reduction includes bias subtraction,
  flatfield and distortion correction, shift-and-add of dithered NIR 
  images, astrometry, and a basic source detection and PSF-photometry. 
  While this pipeline is presently tuned for GRBs, it is intended to
  extend it for generic GROND observations. In the future, these reduced
  data may be shipped together with the raw data.

- As mentioned above, any publication using GROND data should contain
  representatives of the GROND-team, the number of which will depend
  on the level of involvment. Also, a reference to the GROND instrument
  paper should be made: Greiner J., Bornemann W., Clemens C., et al. 2008,
  PASP (in press).