Page History

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Background

The concept of Multi-cycle Cycle Treasury (MCT) programs was developed as a mechanism to allow the HST Hubble Space Telescope community to address high-impact science questions that require observations on a scale that cannot be supported by the standard time allocation process. MCT programs were defined as GO programs that required at least 450 orbits. There was no restriction or pre-selection of science topics. Up to 500 GO orbits together with 250 orbits of Director's Discretionary time were made available for these programs in each of cycle Cycles 17, 18 and 19. Following  Following the highly-successful Servicing Mission 4, the Call for MCT proposals was issued in August 2009. A total of 39 proposals were received and reviewed by a dedicated Telescope Allocation Committee that met in January 2010. Based on the TAC recommendations, the STScI Director, Matt Mountain, approved three programs:

• CANDELS: Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey
  • PI: S. Faber (UCSC) co-PI: H. Ferguson (STScI)
  • WFC3 and ACS imaging of multiple fields to probe galaxy assembly, coupled with a high-redshift supernova survey. 902 orbits.
• Through
• “A Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Survey: UV/optical/near-IR imaging of one quadrant of M31, PHAT, (PI J. Dalcanton, U. Washington) 834 orbits.
• “Through a Lens, Darkly—New Constraints on the Fundamental Components of the Cosmos.” a
  • PI: M. Postman (STScI)
  • A multicolor (14-band) imaging survey of 25 galaxy clusters, coupled with a high-redshift supernova search in coordinated parallel observations, CLASH
  , (PI: M
  • .
  Postman, STScI)
  • 524 orbits.
  “CANDELS: Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey.” WFC3 and ACS imaging of multiple fields to probe galaxy assembly, coupled with a high-redshift supernova survey, (PI: S. Faber, UCSC; co-PI: H. Ferguson, STScI) 902 orbits
• A Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Survey
  • PI J. Dalcanton (U. Washington)
  • UV/optical/near-IR imaging of one quadrant of M31, PHAT. 834 orbits.

Short descriptions of each program are given below. For further details on the selection process, see this STScI Newsletter article. The observations for all programs were complete by late 2013 and the October 2013 Space Telescope User Committee meeting includes status reports from all three projects.

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