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A proposal from a previous cycle submitted to the ALMA archive can be
loaded into the OT as a new proposal directly from the archive using
'File -> Open Project as New Proposal'. Regardless of its status (e.g.
accepted, partially observed) the proposal wi...
Yes, you may request monitoring observations with the standalone ACA.
When setting up time constraints in a standalone ACA Scheduling Block,
make sure that the LAS is set so that only the ACA is used. If the TP
array is also selected, you will receive a...
You can set up monitoring observations in two different ways depending
on the observing strategy.
For monitoring programmes with sparse temporal sampling (e.g. you want
to observe a source every month) you should select 'Are the
observations time-constr...
You can write out the pointings set up in the OT to ASCII for both
"Individual Pointing(s)" and "1 rectangular field" target types by
hitting the "Export" button in the Field Center Coordinates section of
the Field Setup editor.
Note that this will ...
When using the "1 Rectangular Field" option to set up a standard
mosaic the OT accounts for overlapping pointings and you should enter
the sensitivity required over the mosaic to be used for the time
estimate.
However, if you are defining a custom m...
Yes, the ALMA Sensitivity Calculator takes into account the shadowing
by reducing the effective antenna surface area by a factor related to
the target declination. As the Sensitivity Calculator always assumes
that the target is observed at transit, the sh...
No, you cannot decline the Total Power observations to reduce the
total time required for the proposal.
The OT automatically computes whether or not 7-m Array and Total Power
(TP) observations are necessary based on the 'Largest Angular
Structure in sou...
In the 'Expected Source Properties' section of the 'Field Setup'
editor you are required to enter an estimate for the continuum and/or
line peak flux density per synthesized beam for each source defined.
These fluxes will guide your choice of requested se...
The total data rate in an observation is an estimate of the total
instantaneous data rate summed over all basebands based on the current
parameter settings. Please see the OT Reference Manual and the OT
User Manual, available from the Science Portal under...
The Atacama Compact Array (ACA) will be automatically selected by the
Observing Tool (OT) when needed (see the section "Imaging
Considerations - Arrays and Configurations" in the ALMA OT User
Manual) [https://almascience.org/documents-and-tools/]. The OT ...
Solar system bodies which are not included in the "Choose a Solar
System object?" drop-down list in the Field Setup section of a Science
Goal can be specified using the 'Ephemeris' option in the same list.
This lets you load a JPL Horizons file as the eph...
You cannot explicitly select which sideband a spectral window will be
placed in, since the OT automatically configures a solution based on
the defined spectral windows. However, if the currently defined
spectral windows are all in one of the two sidebands...
Suppose you want to observe the CO(1-0) line in a galaxy for which
the integrated CO(1-0) line flux density is known from previous
observations,or estimated based on simulations etc. Let us first
assume that the proposed ALMA observations will not spat...
You need not give coordinates for a proposal to validate successfully.
For a target-of-opportunity (ToO) observations of an unknown target
(e.g. a gamma ray burst), or observations of a moving target, you only
need to specify the name (e.g. GRB1) and leav...
You can load multiple sources into a Science Goal using an ASCII file
stored on your local disk. For each target, the text file must contain
a list of comma-separated entries - for the format see the OT
Reference Manual or hit "Export to File..." - the re...
While the ALMA OT comes loaded with several digitized sky surveys that
can be searched for online, you can also load your own image, provided
that it is in FITS format with coordinates defined in the ICRS/J2000
or Galactic systems. To load an image, go to...
You can see how much time is assumed for calibration by using the
"Time Estimate" function on the "Control and Performance" page of the
Science Goal. After you set up your science goal sensitivity
requirements, simply click on the "Time Estimate" button, ...
The OT has a built in utility to easily set up rectangular, equally
spaced mosaics using the "1 rectangular Field" option in the "Field
Setup" editor. This is the easiest way of setting up mosaics, since
the sensitivity entered is that desired over the co...
In the Control & Performance editor of the OT you can choose between
two types of time-constrained observations:
* Single visit: the observation needs to be executed only once
within either one or several possible time windows. You can enter
these pos...
A new release of the OT, containing the most up-to-date information on observatory capabilities, will be announced with every observing cycle in the call for proposals. The Web Start installation automatically updates itself. If you installed the OT man...
If the transition of interest is so close to the edge of a sideband
that the half-width of the desired spectral window puts the edge of
the window beyond the band edge, you need to either (1) choose a
narrower spectral window, or (2) change the central fr...
The default way of observing four or fewer lines in the OT is to
assign each spectral window to a separate baseband. Having 3 basebands
in one sideband and 1 in the other is not allowed for the "Sideband
Separating" (2SB) receivers used for Bands 3, 4, 5,...
In spectral scan mode the spectral setup has some overlap both between
the spectral windows of a given tuning, and between individual
tunings. This ensures that the edge channels that are most likely to
be affected by technical problems can be flagged wit...
It is not expected that uv-coverage will be a significant issue as
even snapshot observations will have sufficient uv-coverage for the
vast majority of projects. You can verify this using the simdata task
in CASA or the ALMA Observation Support Tool
(http...
In general, no, as putting all sources into a single Science Goal is
much more convenient. The issue though with multiple tuning projects
(multiple source redshifts or spectral scans) is that each tuning
currently requires its own set of calibration obser...
Individual targets that are larger than 1/3 of the Field of View (FOV)
of the 12-m Array will require a Nyquist sampled mosaic to obtain
uniform sensitivity across the field due to the sensitivity fall-off
towards the edges of the primary beam. This can b...
If the Observing Tool is started from a Mac, many users who are
running OS X Lion (10.7) or later may find that clicking on the Web
Start icon in a browser does not, as used to be the case, start the OT
automatically. This turns out to be due to a feature...
In the ALMA system, no portion of the baseband or spectral window can
lie outside of either the IF or RF range. This fact alone does not
present any unforeseen limitations on what can be observed within the
specified ranges. However, an issue arises becau...
Only one spectral setup is allowed per Science Goal. A spectral setup
is defined as a combination of an observing mode (spectral
line/continuum/spectral scan), a polarisation option (XX, Dual, Full),
and a set of user-input frequencies that determine the ...
If you have problems with the installation and/or startup of the OT,
please consult the Troubleshooting page
[http://almascience.org/proposing/observing-tool/troubleshooting].
This also includes a link to a "Known Issues" page that documents bugs
or undes...
The Web Start version of the OT and Archive Download Manager require
the JNLP file to be executed with javaws. If your default java client
is another application (ex. IcedTea), the file will launch this
application and give you the error:
Fatal: Ini...
If the OT outputs a nonsensical PDF when you try to print the whole
proposal, or if you notice anomalies like running over the allotted
space for your abstract or missing your list of co-I's, it is likely
to be related to the unavailability of fonts on th...
The PDF proposal summary generated by the OT reports three time
estimates: the total time required on the 12-m Array for all
configurations, the total ACA (7-m Array plus total power) time, and
the non-standard mode time required on the 12-m Array. Since ...
ALMA is capable of receiving two orthogonal polarizations (X and Y)
simultaneously, each of which detects half of the radiation from an
unpolarized source; the frequencies detected by each polarization are
identical. Therefore, if both X and Y are detecte...
A source as defined by the OT is a collection of parameters comprising
the source coordinates, its proper motion, radial velocity, and
expected source properties (line/continuum peak flux density, line
width and polarization percentage). It may have a tar...
In order to change the column that is used to enable a primary sort
of the rows in the Spectral Line Picker, it is necessary to
double-click the desired column. This will cause a big triangle to
appear in that column's heading and subsequent single cli...
The technical justification guidelines are given in relevant section
in the ALMA Cycle Proposer's Guide
[https://almascience.eso.org/documents-and-tools].
The technical justification is entered directly into the OT via a
designated Technical Justificati...
The Largest Angular Structure (LAS) of a source corresponds to the
largest coherent structure in a source that needs to be imaged. This
is a very important parameter for an interferometer as the shortest
baselines set a limit on the largest scale that ...
You can download the ALMA Observing Tool (OT) from the Science Portal.
Click on the "Proposing" menu on the left panel of the Science Portal,
and that will reveal a drop-down menu, with a link to the ALMA OT.
Alternatively, you can go directly to the Obs...
Since Cycle 5, the PI has had the ability to input a range of
resolutions in the OT (a single value is considered a very tiny
range). Based on this information, the OT writes a range of acceptable
angular resolution into the Scheduling Block as follows:
...
The Observing Tool (OT) time estimate has various minima as described
in the OT Users Manual, available from the Science Portal under
'Documents & Tools' [http://almascience.org/documents-and-tools]:
"Broadly speaking, the OT time estimates are arrived ...
The OT total time estimate does not scale linearly with the
theoretical "time on source". For short observations, this is because
there are some minimum times imposed (see KB article "Why does the OT
time estimate stop decreasing as I ask for progressivel...
If the "Enabled privileged operations" checkbox is ticked in the "Advanced" tab of File->Preferences, the OT will prompt for a username and password every time the OT is started and, upon failure, report that this option is being disabled. "Privileged ope...
OT Web Start does not work :
After you click the Web Start icon, if the OT is still "loading
resources" and does not proceed, you might want to save the OT by
"download linked file as". Then go to the directory where you put
ObservingTool.jnlp and run t...
There was a bug in Java 9 which prevents the WEB START version of the
OT from opening when you try to run it. The only solution is to ensure
that you have Java 8 on your system and use it to run the OT.
The download stops with an Application Error with ...
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