The Single Field Wizard collects information from a user about the target, spectral setup and control parameters of his/her observation.
The user is asked to input information about the target on a form editor like the one used in the system view. A visual editor is also available to specify the coordinates of the target and/or the offset. The visual editor downloads an image around the target from one of the image servers listed in the tool, and displays it. FITS files in the local disk can be used as well. Clicking on the displayed image, source coordinates and/or offset coordinates of the single field are set in the form editor.
For the spectral setup, line and continuum are the only choices at present and the user selects either of the two. Only one spectral element, i.e. one line or one continuum, is allowed to be specified. This version of the wizard does not provide flexible correlator setup functions.
Additionally, the wizard asks the user about some control parameters such as angular resolution, largest scale, and sensitivity. Finally the wizard splits the observation into SchedBlocks according to the provided information, calculates necessary exposure time to achieve the sensitivity, and set the goals in each SchedBlock. The algorithm used here as the first version to split into SchedBlocks is a very simple one; desired resolution and the target elevation are considered.
Some of the parameters provided by the user are used to split the observation into SchedBlocks or to calculate the likely execution time, and others are just copied to their corresponding items in the SchedBlocks. The former are validated in the wizard, but the latter must be validated by running the validator. A dialog appears to prompt the user to correct at the time to proceed to the next page if the wizard finds improper inputs.
In this version, the SchedBlocks generated by the wizard include only observing targets, not calibration targets.
The set of the parameters provided by the user is placed in the Project Structure tree in the Science View and expressed by an icon. Selecting the icon, the user can update the parameters of the set, and SchedBlocks can be generated from the updated parameters. Selecting "Generate SBs from the selected Single Field Wizard" from the "Tool" menu, the user is allowed to generate SchedBlocks from an existing parameter set without editing.
This type of parameter set can be saved as well as other parameter sets like Target Spaces or ROIs.
The ALMA OT Team, 2012 May 25