The Hubble Rate

Is approaching 1 per minute and accelerating.

Proposals of course!
Yes, it is Happy, Happy Hubble Proposal Deadline Day!

You've downloaded yer new and improved APT20 (Astronomers Proposal Tool); installed the updated Java; bookmarked the subtly changed Proposal Guidelines, and even written some Science Justification - now it is the deathmarch to the deadline o'doom - can you write your Descriptions of the Observations or Analysis and Management section before dinner (tea on the west coast)?!
Will you get your lucky 4 digit submission number at 7:59:53?
Or are you one of these very organized people who resubmitted last years 2nd quartile ranked proposal and are resting with a two digit sub no?

213 thursday night, eh;
400 at 9:22 this morning;
432 at 10:08 am;
522 at 12:54 pm...

the rate is over one every two minutes, and headed for 1 per minute this afternoon;

I think we'll be comfortably over 1,000 by 8 pm (EST) tonight, but not by much;
the instruments are mature, the field is saturating.
May be a bit on the high side, due to desperation...

Strangely, although the rate is clearly accelerating, one can't help but think that the Hubble Constant is going to be decreasing.
Paradoxical.

Who will the lucky duckies be this year?
We can only hope the odds are as good as one in ten...

PS: everyone knows about the RA exclusion zone around the multi-cycle extragalactic treasury proposals, right?
No point looking anywhere near them - it is clearly the year for looking at K stars at moderate galactic latitude, in the outer bulge, or something...

Well, got one in, one out of my hands to the joy of the co-Is, and one, very cute, itsy bitsy Theory Proposal to finish...
...unless someone needs a last minute "pet theorist" of course - still hours to whip something together!

Back to work, slackers!

PS: Updated timeline from fb:

0017 01:49 pm Feb 12 (say what?)
0058 05:24 pm Feb 21
0094 11:28 am Feb 22
0213 03:45 pm Feb 23
0229 05:31 pm Feb 23
0277 09:22 pm Feb 23
0297 11:05 pm Feb 23
0328 02:50 am Feb 24
0367 06:55 am Feb 24
0400 09:22 am Feb 24
0432 10:08 am Feb 24
0522 12:54 pm Feb 24
0575 01:59 pm Feb 24
0702 04:02 pm Feb 24
0898 06:17 pm Feb 24

ok, that is 196 in 135 minutes, definitely over the 1 per minute now,
we have "gone parabolic" as innumerates in finance like to say...

and I am out of here, hope my co-Is submit the last proposal I am on,
then it is the west coast's turn...

someone call in the 07:59 numbers

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Ah but COSMOS and the EGS are available. Clearly we need to survey COSMOS with UVIS to get UV data on the whole feed. Just, you know, cause we can't let those galactic and planet people have those orbits.

I just thought I saw my telephone message button flash once and stop--I think I'll be hallucinating little pink Edwin Hubbles soon. My prop # are almost all in, ranging from 17 (Hail organized collaborator o' mine) to 575 (rushing an AR in). Of course, just because I submitted, doesn't mean I'm actually done of course...

Desperately trying to figure out which of my previous props are from Cycle 16 and later and which are from the olden days, when PIs were Real PIs and Graduate Students actually did all the hard work...

924 at 6:42 pm Feb 24
966 at 7:12 pm Feb 24

That plot was awesome. Let me guess..the flattening off at t~120min before deadline was the `I am just too tired to write another quick HST proposal' regime...

By Pat Durrell (not verified) on 24 Feb 2012 #permalink

Well, those exclusion zones only exclude large projects. Cuz dammit, my favorite globular cluster lies in one of those zones, and I'm submitting for it anyways...with a proposal number of 1031. (And I'm co-I on a proposal with number 1049.)

While snarking, you might want to note that part of that RA exclusion zone is due to M31, not just deep field projects.

Highest number seen on Facebook: #1091 at 8:05p EST

1087 at 7:57

I see your 1091 at 8:05 and raise you 1092 at 8:00. They haven't been conducting any neutrino experiments at STScI recently have they?

Last year was a lot more fun - because you could start a proposal after the deadline and still get it in on time.

@Ben - M31 counts as extragalactic - heck, if you count it on log scale it is over half way across the universe - I blame Julianne!

I thought last year's kerfuffle ruined the fun, at least for those of us who had scheduled ourselves out of the possibility of taking opportunity of such serendipity...

M31 counts as extragalactic, but the science is pretty much stars all the way. I think we recently passed the number of stars in SDSS.

But, I stand firm against your blame. M31 with HST is the sh$#t.

I didn't revise any proposals after the deadline during last year's kerfuffle, on the principle that a day off would probably be better for me in the long run than tweaking a proposal (or trying to write a new one in a day). Sometimes excess editing doesn't actually improve things - it would be sort of interesting to know if people who revised proposals after the deadline last year had a higher or lower success rate than the average.