The Phase 2 checklist

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Let's summarize what you need to know, check and do while preparing your Phase 2 material. We assume that the situation is as follows:

• you received the ESO web-letter with the good news

• in your p2 account you see the new run(s) associated to your successful proposal

• you received the e-mail from the ESO support astronomer(s) associated to the run(s), and thus, you have a direct channel of communication to ESO in case of problems in the Phase 2 preparation.

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You are ready to start preparing your OBs by following these steps:

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• Step 1 (for non expert ESO users only): get familiar with the Service mode and its 3 golden rules

• Step 2 (for non expert ESO users only): getting familiar with the concept of the Observing Block, its components and rules

• Step 3 (for non expert ESO users only): get familiar with the web-tool p2 through the tutorials and p2demo

• Step 4 if you need to break any of the OB rules, ask the permission to ESO through the p2 waiver request or Program change request channels before preparing your OBs. It would be very unfortunate to prepare your Phase 2 material and discover at the end of the process that you must restart with a different strategy because your request has been rejected!

• Step 5: start preparing the OBs:

  • if this is your first time, you have two options. You can start from scratch generate new OBs in the run of your p2 account by following the tutorials. Alternatively, you can import the appropriate OB contained in the tutorial folders of p2demo according to the instrument and observing mode you specified in the Phase 1 proposal.

  • work with tutorials, User and template manuals (you can find all the useful links per instrument in the Instrument table) to fill all the OB components:

    • the templates

    • the observing constraints

    • the finding charts

    • the readme file

• Step 6 Once you finished one or more OBs, click the verify bottom to check that everything is ok. The tool will check that the SM golden rules are respected and will additional error or warning related to a particular limitation of the instrument setup (check for these additional rules per instrument in the Instrument table).

• Step 7 what to do in case of problems: if the verify procedure raised errors, do not panic. Very likely you did not read carefully the instrument User and template manuals (did you read them at all?). In 99% of the case, a simple solution so solve the problem is contained in the manuals or in the FAQ in the ESO Knowledgebase. Only in the remaining 1% of the cases you really needs our help. If this is your case, reply to the e-mail sent to you by your support astronomer. It is a direct channel of communication with the person who will review and hopefully approve your Phase 2 material and declare it ready for observation at the telescope. You can also contact us at support@eso.org.

• Step 8 Once all the OBs of your run are ready and verified you are ready to certify them. This step is necessary although it will not perform any further check of the OB. At least one OB per run must be certified. Otherwise, p2 will not let you submit.

• Step 9 Everything is ready and you can finally press "Notify ESO". After this, your OB will be available to the support astronomer for the review and approval.

• Step 10 Congratulations! You submitted your Phase 2 material (hopefully well before the deadline! This is always very much appreciated). Your support astronomer will confirm the successful completion of the process and the approval of the material or will contact you to solve any problems spotted during the revision.

 

 

If you can tick all these bullets, your observation should now be ready to be included in the queue for the next semester observations. Good luck with your program!