The YALO Phase II Observing Program Submission Process

The observing program submission procedure is analogous to "Phase II" observing preparation for Hubble Space Telescope, WIYN, or the ESO NTT and VLT. Indeed, many ideas and examples were derived from those systems in the development of these tools. YALO has only one instrument with three well-defined observing modes, so hopefully it will be straightforward to use.

The steps in the Phase II submission process are as follows:

Step 1: Login to the Observation Preparation Pages

Projects awarded time with the YALO telescope are assigned a Project ID for their programs. This ID is your entry point into the observation preparation tools on this web server. Using the tools, you can can create obs files for your observing program, and edit or delete existing obs files. The obs files reside on the server in separate directories assigned to each approved project.

If you do not find your project ID in the list, contact the queue manager or NOAO program coordinator (as appropriate). Please do not appropriate someone else's project space.

Step 2: Create Observing Templates (obs files)

Obs files are used by the ANDICAM data-taking system to execute your observations. A set of web forms are provided to help you create obs files that have the correct format (eliminating syntax errors if you try to make them by hand). In addition, these obs file creation tools provide estimates of the amount of real-time required to execute an observation sequence, exclusive of telescope acquisition and setup time. These estimates will help you optimize data-acquisition for your program, especially for those programs that will be acquiring simultaneous IR and CCD images. Click here for detailed instructions for creating obs Files.

Step 3: Submit the Phase II Observing Program

Once you have created a complete set of obs files for all targets in your program, the Phase 2 Observing Program Submission Form is used to submit the obs files along with a set of detailed instructions to the YALO queue manager for eventual scheduling and implementation. This form copies the final set of obs files and the instructions (in an ASCII text file) to an ftp staging disk, and emails the instructions to the queue management team (via the yalo-submit mailing list). Once on the staging disk, the files will be downloaded by the queue manager or by the on-site observers (at the queue manager's instructions) to CTIO where they will be used to execute your program when it is scheduled. Click here for detailed instructions for using the Phase II program submission form.

Problems and Feedback

If you have problems using these web tools, or have comments that you think will improve their usefulness, please send your feedback to Rick Pogge at OSU (pogge@astronomy.ohio-state.edu).