OT Video Tutorials

The OT video tutorials provide an audio-visual demonstration of different aspects of proposal preparation in the (web-based) OT. Novice users should start with the second video and work their way down, while more experienced users should start with the first one and then jump straight to one of the specialised videos. All videos can be downloaded for offline viewing.

What’s new: main differences from the Java desktop-based OT

This video discusses what’s new in Cycle 13, and also describes the main differences between the old desktop-based tool and the new web-based OT. This is particularly useful if you are an experienced user of the desktop-based OT, as some changes make the usage of the tool substantially different.

Introduction and the staging area

This video describes the main features you will see when accessing the OT. In particular, it discusses how to open new or archival projects, how to navigate the staging area, and highlights some of the most important characteristics of the web-based OT.

General proposal information

In this video, we will describe the content of the Proposal panel, where the user can input some of the main properties of a project, including title, abstract, proposal type, scientific category, and the list of investigators. We will also discuss the possibility of joint proposals with other facilities. 

The field setup

This video shows you how to use the spatial editor and define the spatial field setup, and describes how to define the targets of the science goal and the options in terms of spatial coverage (pointings and mosaics).

The spectral setup

In this video, we discuss how to define the spectral setup of your science goal, describing in depth the choices of spectral line, single continuum, and spectral scan. The video contains useful tips to prepare the spectral setup, and it shows how to use the Spectral Line Picker.

Control and performance

In this video, we describe the content of the Control and Performance panel, where the user can describe the sensitivity and resolution requests for each science goal.

The technical justification

This tutorial focuses on how to properly input the technical justification of your science goals. In particular, it highlights which parameters are important to check and verify before running a validation and writing the technical justification.