and then must Confirm it all:
The Proposal List
Once logged in, you will be able to create a new proposal (as below), or,
if you already have proposals under preparation, elect to edit one.
Click for better view
The bottom part of the window (not shown above) shows any previous
proposals, and is followed by the button
Clicking on this button takes to a window where you must choose
the queue to which the proposal is being submitted.
Please see the
NOTES
elsewhere on how to decide this,
select one queue from the dropdown list, and click OK.
The proposal screen has four tabs.
-
Applicants
-
(Science & Technical) Justification
-
Observing request
-
Additional issues.
Click for better view
Adding Applicants
All required fields are flagged with an asterisk:
If you decide later that you would like to invite an applicant who
wasn't invited initially, you can do so from the "applicants" page. The
"invite" button gets you a confirmation screen as follows:
NB: the email address used here must match identically that used by
the co-I on
registration (and vice versa), because it is used in security
validation for access to your proposal. Mail aliases which are
functionally but not typographically equivalent are, of course, unknown
to the system and so will not work.
Science Justification Page
Click for better view
Here you enter the title, the abstract and select files to upload for the
science case, technical case and figures/references. You can -- at any
time -- save the proposal in your own computer for future completion by
Clicking the appropriate button shown at bottom. Clicking the 'Save and
Submit' button takes you to a confirmation page - so there's no risk of
accidental submission. (Save your proposal regularly to avoid
frustration).
Upload buttons and dialogues
The three upload buttons
get you into dialogues for upload of
pdf or ps page images, or plain text files.
Note that all fonts should be 11 point or larger. Smaller fonts will be
rejected by the TAG.
Combining case pages in one file
By default, the justification files are three individual one-page PDFs,
where the first page is the science case, the second page is for technical
case only, and the third page
is for figures and references. It is possible to combine the science
and technical cases into one two-page file and skip loading
"Second Justification File" in the
form above. If you have ticked the "Assess
as large proposal" button (in other words if your proposal seeks
96 hours of observing or more) then you are allowed two pages of science
justification and one page of technical case, plus one page of figures
and references.
Summary: in all cases the Figures and
References page must be uploaded as a separate file, but the system
will allow science and tech cases to be combined in the first upload -
spanning two pages for normal submissions, three pages for Large
Proposals.
Click here for some additional tips
on preparing justification PDFs.
Saving your proposal
The following buttons are on all subsequent screens
You can save your proposal in the database and return to it at a later
date. Only upon clicking the final button ("Save and Submit") does your
proposal get a project ID number. It is, of course, a good idea to
"Save and continue" fairly regularly in any given session.
Observing Request Page
(A partial screen image is shown below)
Here you specify the targets of the observing proposal, and the necessary
amount of time, weather-type and instrument suite.
You can also specify if it is a long-term proposal, or whether it requests a
large amount of time (needing 84 hours or more), and you can make any
scheduling
comments. Flexible scheduling is the default operation of JCMT and you should
request non-flexible scheduling only in exceptional circumstances.
Click for better view
Specifying an observation
Give the target name -- maybe use Simbad to get your coordinates
loaded -- and give the integration time and priority if applicable.
Uploading a target list
Each entry in the list must be in the JCMT catalog format shown.
One white-space separates the fields.
Additional Issues
Provide information on students, proposals to other TAGs, etc.. You might use the
free format box to detail previous proposals, the needs of inexperienced observers
- and anything else you think is relevant to a full assessment of this proposal.
Click for better view
Troubleshooting
- When filling in numerical
dialogue boxes, try to use a simple numerical format, rather than
specifying
hours and minutes, e.g. use "2.5" rather than "2 hours 30 mins". If
not, you may receive the error "must be a double".
- Always try to log in & log out of NorthStar cleanly,
otherwise browser cookies may be set that generate unpredictable page
navigation & UI responses. Also, try to use the navigation links in
the NorthStar pages, rather than the browser "Forward" and "Back"
buttons.
- When preparing science and technical cases, we strongly recommend
using PDF files, and reading these
notes.
- Sometimes a pdf science-case file will fail to upload, with an
error message implying that the system doesn't think it is a pdf file.
It appears that this is a mime types issue, and there are a number
of
possible solutions: (i) try running a different web browser; (ii)
convert your pdf file to postscript and uploading that instead; or
(iii) shut
your browser down, move ~/.mailcap to a different file name,
run your browser back up and retry the upload. (Reinstate .mailcap
after you have completed
the uploading.) It is possible that ~/.mime.types is involved, but
~/.mailcap is the more likely.
Thanks to Mark Rawlings for the original (UKIRT) version of this
page.
Iain Coulson/20080814
