Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) invites proposals from the astronomical community of India and Belgium for observations with 3.6m Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT) for the observing cycle from October 2020 to January 2021 (DOT-2020-C2). The deadline for receiving these proposals is 23:59:59 IST (UTC+5.5 hrs), Sunday, August 09, 2020. India has 93% share in the telescope time of which 33% is guaranteed to ARIES, and the Belgian share is 7%. The Principal Investigator of the proposals should have affiliations at Indian or Belgian academic institutions and/or universities.
The 3.6 m DOT telescope is located at Devasthal in the district of Nainital, India and it has been designed to achieve seeing-limited observations of astronomical sources at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. The telescope currently offers four instruments for carrying out imaging and spectroscopic observations of celestial sources. The IMAGER is an optical imaging instrument covering wavelengths ranging from 400 to 900 nm whereas the TIRCAM2 can provide near infrared imaging observations from 1 to 3.7 microns. The ADFOSC is a low resolution spectrograph and camera having sensitivity in the wavelength range 350 nm to 1050 nm. TANSPEC provides simultaneous wavelength coverage from 550 nm to 2540 nm, and a spectral resolving power of about 2750.
Science observing proposals are to be submitted online via the DOT Online Proposal Management and Evaluation System (DOPSES), which provides password authenticated, web browser based interface for proposal submission. Note that the proposals may be submitted only by the PIs, but all co-Is also need to be registered users of the system. Allocation of time on the telescope will be based on the assigned ranking of the proposals through a peer-review process by Indian and Belgian Time Allocation committees for Indian and Belgian proposals respectively.
Science observing policy document, link to DOPSES, and users manual for the telescope and back-end instruments can be found at http://www.aries.res.in/dot 
9 August 2020
Prof Jean Surdej
Chair of the Belgian 3.6m DOT Time Allocation Committee
