LTO Report Guidelines

Two of the goals in using this new form are to promote consistency from reporter to reporter and to achieve the highest level of completeness. To achieve this you are requested by Buell Jannuzi, Mike Merrill and, Dick Joyce to use the following guidelines whilst you are entrenched in the throes of filling out the nightly LTO Report form.

• Find Hints and Help Below

Weather Comments:   (Required)

Give a brief description of the weather trends during the night, especially the sky conditions. This report form does provide averages of temperature, dewpoint, relative humidity along with wind speeds and bearing from the 4 Meter weather sensors. It also provides a plot of each of these for the night from 6 PM to 6 AM.

Proposal Number:  (New Feature)

This field should fill in automatically when the form is loaded. However, if it does not you are not required to fill in the number. But, if you can easily find it and put it in that would be appreciated. Note: no number will appear if T&E is scheduled, or if the number is not available as is often the case at the 0.9 Meter.

Split Observing Nights:  (New Feature)

If there is a night where the observing is split between two groups (ie., with two different proposal numbers), both the Proposal # field and the Split night check-box should reflect this automatically. First, the Proposal # field will display the proposal numbers separated by a back-slash, "/", or as an example; it may show something like: "Checkout/2010A-0101" (see details below on how to account for Checkout). Second, the Split Night check-box should be checked. Also, if more than one instrument is scheduled (more likely at WIYN) the Instrument field will reflect this.

Seeing:   (Requested)

For each telescope - Please record, in the Seeing entry field, an estimate for the typical (best guess of median) seeing during the night, in arcseconds.
Then, please include in the Observing Status field the filter type (R is best), information about the range of seeing measurements during the night (ie., best and worst seeing measurements or estimates), state whether these were actual measurements or just guesses (if guesses; based on what).
Note: any comments about the general seeing conditions on the mountain should go in the general Comments field.

Time Usage (Hours Used / Hours Lost Due To):   (Required)

Both sections for the Night's Activity, and Hours Lost Due To: comprise several possibilities for how time was used, or lost during the night. The main page of the form lists only Scientific Research and Weather, and in general these are the two that will typically be used. If however, there are technical problems causing loss of observing time, or if time is used for some activity other than scientific research, please use either the Night's Activity, or the Hours Lost Due To: pull-down menu to bring up a pop-up window and characterize how the night was used. The ("hours used" + "hours lost") must equal the "recognized hours", however, there is one exception to this; that being when the Scientific Research time actually exceeds the Recognized hours.  In this case please record that extra time in the Extra Science Time category within the pop-up window. See below for details on accounting for time usage during the night.

Extra Science Time is defined to be when science observing either begins before the end of twilight (minus 15 minutes), or continues past fifteen minutes after start of twilight. This might include a scenario were time was lost during the night due to weather, or some problem, but the science observing continued past fifteen minutes after start of twilight. The, Extra Science Time field will not add to the Total hours selected that appears at the bottom of the window. This extra time gets reported separately from the total hours for the night.

Time of Night:   (Required)

The real question here is, did the time lost interfere with taking science data, did it interrupt taking science data? If so it would be nice to know the particular time of night when this occurred.

In consideration of those whose job is to interperet both the LTO report and SERVICE entries in the effort to address problems which occur during the night, this report form employs the "Time of Night" field as a means for describing approximately when a problem happened.

So, consider these scenarios:

1.  You start obsevring but after a couple hours, say at 21:15, you begin experiencing telescope problems. Finally, at 22:40 the problem has been fixed and you are back on sky observing.

You would choose 21:00 from the From column, and choose 23:00 from the To column. (Note: time increments are listed by the half hour on the form.)

2.  While observing through the night, data taking is interrupted briefly many times all throughout the night say, to Arcon crashes that were easily recovered from.

You would then characterize the Time of Night for this problem as full night; that being the time From when the night started (or, when the problem first started) To the time the when night ended.

The exact time of a problem is not crucial here, that should be spelled out in the SERVICE request and/or the Observing Status field.  Bracketing the time lost is desired here.

Observing Status:   (Requested)

This field should include information that is descriptive of the night's observing, including a brief synopsis of any problems and their request numbers for where they were reported in Service. Also, any telescope-specific image quality or seeing comments should be recorded here, including estimates or measurements depicting the range of seeing (worst and best) during the night.

Example from talking with say, the 0.9 meter observer: Seeing: 1-1.5" measured on MOSAIC imaged though R filter, really blew up at the end of the night.
Example from talking with the WIYN OA: Seeing estimated at 0.9" as judged by looking at the FOP stars.

No Answer at telescope when called:  (New Feature)

If there is no answer at a telescope when you call to get the night's information please select "NA" from the hours pull-down menu for each of the Scientific Research and Weather categories. You can leave the "Time of Night" fields empty since you really don't know what went on there.
Then, please write in the "Observing Status" field for that telescope, as normal, that there was not answer at the report time.

Comments:   (Required)

Please write a brief (one sentence is fine) portraiture of the observing for the night. One can also include general information describing unusual events during the night, or convey important information that the daytime staff might need to know about. An example might be: "There is a huge rock on the road at mile 11. The highway department was called at 05:30, and told about it". Or, another example: "There were numerous power glitches during the night so we have switched the entire mountain over to generator power".

Report Form Hints, Help, and Features

What is Choose Different and when should I use it?

In designing this form it seemed reasonable to assume two possible scenarios for how time is used and/or why time is lost during the night.

Scenario 1

On a normal night time is used only for "Scientific Research" and/or, time is lost only to "Weather".

Scenario 2

Time may be used for a combination of activities that may or may not include "Scientific Research" and time lost may be for one or more reasons that may or may not include "Weather".

If scenario 1 depicts the night then all time used and/or all time lost gets accounted for on the main form page.

If scenario 2 hold true then all time used and/or all time lost gets accounted for in the pop-up windows

Ex. 1

Say you observed the first three hours of the night, then closed 2 1/4 hours for bad weather, then you opened for a short time and got about ten minutes of data before you had computer problems, then you had instrument problems that prevented observing the rest of the night. You would select Choose Different from one of the pull-down menus in the Time Usage During The Night table, and enter appropriate values in the "Scientific Research" category, then do the same to account for why time was lost, as in the figure below. As for the ten minutes observing after bad weather, just before the computer problems; you would mention that in the "Observing Status" text field.

Ex. 2

Let's say there is a split night due to checkout (this should be evident in the "Proposal Number" column on the "Time Usage" table, or on the telescope schedule). Again, you would select Choose Different from one of the pull-down menus and enter the appropriate values in the Checkout category (most likely using "third_1" for the time of night). Then, you would account for the rest of the night accordingly. The figure below shows how the night was used for Checkout and Scientific Research

Pop-up Windows - behind the scenes

Tip: It is easy to forget to check the Night's Activity check-box or the one for Hours Lost Due To, but the error checking should alert you.

The pop-up window for a specific telescope's time usage will remember any data entered during the current session if you have done one of two things after entering the data. 1). You selected the Submit button (regardless of whether or not you got an error message or succeeded with the submission).   2). You selected the Cancel button after enter data. No entries will be retained if you select the [X] to close the window after entering data.

Known Bugs:
1). No data is retained in the very first field, ie., the Hours Used pull-down in the Scientific Research category.
2). The Clear Form button will only clear the form if you have not already selected Submit or Cancel.
3). If Choose Different is already selected you will need to de-select it then re-select it to get a window to pop up.