Skip to content
Home > Projects > ORP

ORP

ORP (the OPTICON RadioNet Pilot) brings together the ground-based astronomy community across Europe.

Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 (H2020) research and innovation programme the OPTICON RadioNet Pilot (ORP) aims to facilitate astrophysical discoveries with a comprehensive set of Research Infrastructures in the related domains of optical and radio astronomy through supporting a harmonized access procedure, unified data interfaces, and improved services toward scientific excellence. The ORP Pilot’s objectives include:

  • Providing trans-national and virtual access to radio and optical facilities including rapid response capabilities.
  • Improve services offered by the facilities by developing a new common framework for data access and processing and provide support and training for multi-wavelength astronomers.
  • Harmonize processes by developing common standards for observation requests and implement a new single access point proposal tool with interfaces to existing proposal tools for related large astronomy facilities.
  • ​Contributing to astronomy sustainability to raise awareness of and mitigate against the effects of low-earth satellite constellations that are impacting both radio and optical wavelengths. ​

The UK ATC led and developed the optical trans-national access program for the ORP also known as OPTICON. The OPTICON telescope network comprises of 14 distinct optical telescopes in a size range from 0.6 to 10 metres. The program organises a series of call for proposals which aligns with the telescope observing semesters where astronomers can uniquely apply for one or multiple optical telescopes in a single proposal. The UK ATC provided management and administration for this proposal process, managing an overall budget for telescope access of €2.5 million.
The ORP project was launched on 24 March 2021 and ran until March 2025. The OPTICON trans-national access was funded by previous EU contracts going back nearly two decades.

Find out more about ​OPTICON RadioNet Pilot

Find out more about Optical Trans-National access

 

 

The OPTICON RadioNet Pilot (ORP) logo.
Team member