Proceedings Article | 12 July 2008
Proc. SPIE. 7016, Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems II
KEYWORDS: Observatories, Telescopes, Software development, Quality systems, Shape memory alloys, Automatic tracking
We present a new suite of web-based software tools developed at the
Submillimeter Array which allow the tracking of projects from the
proposal stage all the way to successful completion of the
observations. The web-based nature of these tools allows easy
world-wide coordination and collaboration through all aspects of a
science project, from proposal writing, time allocation, observing
script preparation, scheduling, and finally observations. These tools
are based on a project system data-flow which was developed after
extensive discussion with proposing scientists, time allocation
committee members, support astronomers, and engineers responsible for
data quality. This system allows every stage of a project to be
tracked, with proposals, time allocation comments, observing scripts,
observation schedules, observing logs, data files, data quality
reports, etc, all organized in a simple and convenient structure. In
addition to making the data more readily accessible to the scientists,
this system allows very accurate tracking of other telescope
operational parameters, such as efficiency, share-holder's time
fractions, and instrument performance, to name just a few. We will
present the underlying design for the project system data-flow, and
show the software used to ensure each project is tracked completely
during its path from proposal to completed science observation.