FAQs

Q: When is the deadline for Phase 1 proposals?

The deadline is 24 February 2012, 18:00:00 SAST (16:00:00 UTC).

Q: What are the rules for Phase I -> Phase II transition?

You can find the rules here

Q: Does my proposal have to be marked as final? Do all my Co-Investigators have to approve the proposal before the deadline?

PIs can submit as many draft proposals as they like, but the proposal must be marked as final before the deadline or it will not be forwarded to the TACs. There is an option to finalise your proposal when submitting using the PIPT. You can check whether your proposal is marked as final in the Web Manager, which also allows PIs to finalise or un-finalise their proposals.

Contrary to what is implied in the PIPT and emails sent when a proposal is submitted, co-investigators do not all have to approve proposals before the Phase I deadline. Co-Is may continue to approve proposals after the deadline. However, TACs may consider the approval status when they assign time to each proposal. In particular, PIs should ensure that at least one Co-I from each partner contributing time approves the proposal before TACs start work on Monday 02 March 2012.

Q: How do I submit proposals with Co-Is from multiple partners, and how is the time divided between the partners?

If PIs and their Co-Is wish to propose for time from more than one partner, the PI only has to submit the proposal once, using the PIPT. The PI should list the Co-Is and their partners / institutes, and indicate how the time request is divided between the partners. So for example for a two partner proposal the PI could select 50/50%, 25/75%, 100/0%, or any other combination which sums to 100%. The proposal will then automatically be forwarded to the relevant TACs for consideration.

Q: How can I add an institute in the PIPT?

At the bottom of the Investigator form, you can find a link 'Add institute for partner "Other". Click on this link and fill in the form which opens. Hitting the "OK" button of this form will submit your new institute to the Science Database, although you may have to provide your user credentials first.

If you don't get an error message, you should assume that the institute has been added. Click on the link "Update partner information" to let the PIPT know about the change.

In case you are running into problems with this, please send the full institute details (name, department (optional), URL, address) to salthelp (at) saao.ac.za and we'll add the institute for you.

Q: What acquisition overhead time should be assumed?

Currently we request PIs allow at least 600s overhead time for pointing and acquisition, for all observing modes except MOS which requires at least 900s overhead. This is based on the typical acquisition time taken during the current commissioning activities. Proposals will be charged for the actual time taken, which may be more or less than this estimate.

PIs can greatly assist in reducing this overhead by providing high-quality finding charts and informative observer notes during Phase II.

Q: I am currently planning a Phase I observing proposal for SALT for a MOS observation. As part of this I need to work out the amount of observing time that will be required and am using the RSS simulator tool. However, this does not allow the calculation of S/N for a slitmask. Would I be correct in assuming that if I set the simulator to longslit mode, then this would tell me the signal-to-noise I would expect from the MOS mode using the same sized slit?

The S/N will actually be a function of position over the field of view. It will be a maximum at the centre and drop (non-symmetrically) at off axis angles along the dispersion direction (left/right). So you can use the results from the simulator tool for long slit as a maximum S/N value.

The RSS observer's guide discusses this on page 10. The link is www.salt.ac.za/telescope/instrumentation/rss/rss-observers-guide-pdf/

There is also a simulator tool specifically for MOS (though unfortunately it does not include the pg0300 grating) which is located at www.sal.wisc.edu/PFIS/docs/rss-vis/ebb/pfis/observer/specsim.html

This produces an efficiency plot for off axis sources which will help you estimate how your S/N will drop for your off axis sources.

Q: I am planning an observation using the Fabry-Perot mode. I would be scanning across a single line in steps. In terms of overheads, is the etalon adjustment time taken into account by the RSS simulator for the Total Observation Time or do I need to allow for an additional overhead?

The time taken to adjust the etalon is less that the CCD readout time, so can be ignored for overhead purposes.

Q: Can I use my own target spectrum in the RSS/Salticam Simulator?

Yes. When adding a target, choose the option "User Supplied" from the list of suggested spectra. You then can read in your spectrum from an ASCII file.

This file must have two columns. The first column contains the wavelengths in Angstrom, the second contains the flux in arbitrary units. (The flux units don't matter, as the flux will be normalized to match the requested magnitude.)

You may add comments of the form "# my comment". So an extremely simple example file might be:

# A linear spectrum for the sake of illustration.

4000 1
5000 1.5
6000 2

The flux is assumed to be zero outside the wavelength range covered by the file.

Q: Can I import my targets from a file?

Yes, you may. In the targets form there is an "Import Targets from File" button underneath the tables of mandatory and optional targets. See https://www.salt.ac.za/wm/pipt_manager/MultipleTargetDefinitionFormat.pdf for an outline of the required file format. The new target properties for this call (Moon, rank, observing time) may be included in the file.

Here is an en example of how a target might look like in the file:

"My Example Target" CataclyV* 16 01 17 -45 17 57 2000.0 I 17 20.1
    EPH: 2455257 HJD 18 0.00003473
    MOON: Bright
    OT: 2345
    RANK: High

Q: Can I re-use my Phase 1 proposal from the previous semester?

You have to create and submit a new proposal. However, if you still have the Phase 1 proposal on your computer, you may import it and clone it (using Proposal > Clone). Add the required changes to the cloned proposal (i.e. the one with "Unsubmitted-nnn" as its proposal code) and submit it.

If you don't have the Phase 1 proposal any more, as of version 1.992 the menu item Online > Import from Database in the PIPT allows you to import it from the server. Again, you should clone the imported proposal before starting to edit.

Q: Can I import the targets from an old proposal of mine?

Yes.

The target data is exported by means of the File > Export Target Data menu item.

In order to import the data into your new proposal, in the navigation tree click on the Targets node of that proposal. You'll get the targets form, which contains a table of mandatory targets and a table of optional targets. Underneath both tables you can find an "Add Targets from File" button, which lets you import the data file into the respective table.

Q: How can I assign different rankings to the targets in my proposal?

During Phase II, the PI can give individual rankings to different targets (or different observations of the same target) within their proposals. This does not need to be specified for Phase I. Rankings only discriminate between targets within the same proposal.

Rankings should not be confused with priorities. The priority is set by the TAC, and proposals with a higher priority will be preferred in the observing queue. The ranking is set by the PI, and only affects the relative rank of the targets within their own proposal. In the observing queue,  a proposal with higher priority will still be given preference over lower priority proposals, regardless of ranking, whilst targets within a proposal will be given preference based on the rankings assigned by the PI. For example, a block that is given a ranking #5 by the PI of a priority 1 proposal will still be more likely to be observed than a block that is given a ranking #1 by the PI of a priority 3 proposal.

Q: How can I add figures and table to my science case LaTeX file?

You cannot use the floating 'figure' or 'table' environments for this. However, you can use the '\includegraphics' command (for images) and the 'tabular' environment (for tables). You can centre them with the 'centre' environment. Unfortunately, there is no '\caption' command available outside a float, so you'll have to create your captions manually.

Q: The PIPT doesn't work as expected. What can I do?

Various issues are discussed in the questions below. If yours isn't discussed, you should first make sure that you are running Java 6 on your machine. It might well be that you have several versions, and that an older one is the default.

If you are running Java 6, try saving your changes, quitting the PIPT and restarting it. With a bit of luck, your problems go away.

In case that still doesn't help, please send an email to salthelp (at) saao.ac.za. If you feel it might be helpful, please export your proposal as a zip file (there is a menu item in the File menu for that) and send it along with your mail. Please mention any oddities you may have come across before your problem appeared. 

Q: When trying to log in, I get an error "peer not authenticated". Why?

This seems to be an SSL related issue with Open JDK. So please make sure you are using Sun Java. You may check this by executing

java -version

in a terminal.

Q: When trying to save my proposal, I get a cryptic error "Adding text to an XML document must not be null". What can I do?

This error may be caused by generic target names like J150542-011754. So you should try changing your target names.

If that doesn't help, use the menu item Proposal > Validate and cut-and-paste the XML into a text editor of your choice. Save it and please send it to salthelp(at)saao.ac.za. 

Q: My proposal submission failed. What should I do?

If you understand the error message, correct the problem and try to submit again.

If the error message is "Adding text to an XML document must not be null", your submission presumably was successful. You should receive a confirmation email in this case, and your proposal should be visible in the Web Manager. If not, contact salthelp (at) saao.ac.za. Please contact salthelp before making any resubmission of your proposal, as it won't have the correct proposal code and a resubmission would be interpreted as a new proposal.

In all other cases, please send an email to salthelp (at) saao.ac.za. Kindly export the proposal as a zip file (use the menu item File > Export as Zip File) and attach it to your mail. If you want us to submit the proposal, please indicate this in your mail.

Q: I click on the Instrument Configuration part of the tree in the PIPT and nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

Nothing, this is a bug. But quitting and restarting the PIPT seems to fix it. (Just remember to save your changes first!)

Q: When submitting, my targets are checked against catalogue values, but the checking gets stuck at the last target. Even the Cancel button won't respond any longer! How can I submit my proposal?

Please export your proposal as a zip file by using the File > Export as Zip File menu item, and send send that file to salthelp (at) saao.ac.za.

Q: I've launched the Visibility Tool from the PIPT. But it never changes the coordinates, even if I change them in the PIPT or choose a new target. Why?

Unfortunately, that's a bug. Please use the stand-alone version of the Visibility Tool instead (which you can download from the observing tools page).

Q: When I create a new investigator, the PIPT tells me that "there exists no SALT partners information on your disk, it will be downloaded now". But this doesn't seem to happen, as the PIPT doesn't stop asking...

You might have no connection to the server (see the question on proxies below). The workaround is to copy the relevant file manually. To this end, quit the PIPT. Find your .PIPT folder (chances are it's in your home directory). Go into that folder and create a new folder named DatabaseInfo (if it doesn't exist yet). Download the partner information and save it as Partners.txt in the DatabaseInfo folder (using UTF 8 as the encoding). When you launch the PIPT again, all should be well now. 

Q: My PIPT cannot connect to the server. Might this be because I'm using a proxy to connect to the internet?

Yes. You should set the proxy address as well as (if applicable) the username and password for the proxy in the preferences. For some proxies this solves the connectivity issues, although for some authenticated proxies this seems not to be the case. Local IT support at your institution may be able to help resolve proxy issues.

Q: I tried everything, but I still cannot connect to the server. How can I submit my proposal?

Export the proposal as a zip file (there is a menu item for this in the File menu) and send that zip file to salthelp (at) saao.ac.za. Please make sure your proposal is valid (there is a menu item for validating in the Proposal menu) before exporting it!

Q: How can I simulate an imaging or FP exposure in the RSS Simulator?

This feature was missing from some older versions of the RSS simulator, but has been implemented in the latest version. Please update to the latest version, available from

http://www.salt.ac.za/observing/proposing-for-salt-observations/observation-planning-tools/

Q: I cannot import my saved RSS setup back into the RSS Simulator. Is there something I can do about this?

Yes, there is. Please update to the latest version of the RSS Simulator, available from

http://www.salt.ac.za/observing/proposing-for-salt-observations/observation-planning-tools/

Q: I'm using the LaTeX template for my scientific rationale. Unfortunately, the columns in the reference section overlap. Can this be avoided?

The overlapping columns are caused by a too large column size in the document class. This has been corrected, and if you replace your saltproposal.cls file with the latest one from the phase 1 proposal instructions page, you should get two neatly separated columns.

Q: This is all very interesting, but I have a completely different question. Whom can I ask?

Please send an email to salthelp (at) saao.ac.za with your question.