PST Help Desk Comments - October 2010

Reports


Administration

1. I recently registered on the NRAO site, but it now appears that I also had an older registration. I don't recall the earlier registration, but my name appears twice in the proposal system: once under the username "DanielHoman" and again under username "homand@denison.edu". It is possible that a collaborator on an earlier project tried to add me to the system, and that may be the reason for the first instance of my name. The second instance (username: homand@denison.edu) is the one I recently added myself. Can you please delete the first instance?

2. I recently graduated and changed institutions, and updated my profile information accordingly. However, it seemed that I could not delete my thesis plan. Does that remain attached to my nrao profile in perpetuity? Or is there a way to delete it that I missed?

3. I am trying to log into the my.nrao.edu system in preparation for submitting a EVLA proposal. I could not remember my password, so I requested a temporary password. I was sent one and used it to log into the system. The system is now asking me to reset my password. Every time I try this, it just returns me to the reset password page. There is no error message, so I have no idea why it is not accepting my new password information. I have tried several different passwords, but nothing seems to work. Help!

4. I have a kind of an urgent problem. A couple of years ago I created an account to submit a proposal to the VLA. At that time I registered the following e-mail address: dtafoya@astro.sci.kagoshima-u.ac.jp It turns out that last year there was a problem with that server and we had to migrate to a new one, so my e-mail address became: dtafoya@milkyway.sci.kagoshima-u.ac.jp Now, I don't remember my password and when I try to inquire it, I get a message saying that the password was sent to dtafoya@astro.sci.kagoshima-u.ac.jp, but I cannot see the e-mails going to that address. Then, I was wondering if there is a way of retrieving my password.


General


Authors

1. I've recently updated my profile to reflect the fact that I've graduated and have a new affiliation. However, my old information is showing up in print previews of new proposals. Can I get this info updated?
 
I fixed it! What I needed to do is go to "Authors", click my name, and "Update".

2. I just realized that one of the CoIs of my EVLA proposal submitted last Friday dropped out apparently in the course of my on-line manipulations of the CoI list (I was adding two further CoIs and apparently didn't pay attention to what happened to the existing list). The proposal is VLA/11A-183. Is there a way to add this person again? His name is Stephen Skinner from the University of Colorado at Boulder - he was participating in the preparation of the proposal. I would assume that it is important to have the CoI list correct for the proposal evaluation procedures. Please let me know how to proceed. I assume that this ticket will remain confidential - i.e., will not become visible to the outside world of NRAO users.

3. so far I did not submit NRAO proposals myself, but I might do so in the future. However, I am a Co-I on Proposal ID : VLA/2010-08-198. Unfortunately, the PI of that proposal made a typo in my email address. He cannot correct that, but told me to do that myself under http://my.nrao.edu. I did not have an account, so I could not login an change anything, I could not even contact the helpdesk. Therefore I know opened an account. I do not know if that is important for the ongoing proposal process. If it is, please correct my email address in proposal VLA/2010-08-198 from "guenther@head.cfa.harvard.edu]" to "guenther@head.cfa.harvard.edu" (delete the "]").

4. I can't seem to successfully add James Dunlop to my proposal. Every time I try it throws an error.


Scientific Justification


Sources/Resources/Sessions

1. I am writing to submit a proposal to use VLBA + Y1, but when I have clicked "VLBA" on the resources page, the VLA Y1 button remains greyed out and I have not succeeded in persuading this button to stop being greyed out...

2. I have almost completed the VLA/2010 -08-169 proposal but cannot properly set rest frequency. The K band observation should have rest frequency = 115271.2013 MHz (CO(1-0) but redshift z=3.93). When I am implementing this I get the unhappy message "Following required fields are empty" but I dont see which fields they are. Also, I have a "No session" for the K band observations while I have a 'Show session" for the Q band observation. I cannot change it for some reason. In case it is helpful what I am trying to do is to submit an exploratory project for 1 source (MM1842), in the current C or CnB, at CO(1-0) redshifted at z=3.93 (i.e. observed at 115GHz/(1+3.93)=23.3 GHz) (Kand), and at CO(2-1) also redshifted at 230/(1+3.93)=46.6GHz (Q band), Linewidth=190km/s, i.e. bandwidths =72MHz at K band and 145 MHz at Q band.

3. I want to submit a proposal to obtain maximum bandwidth (2GHz RSRO) in a pseudo-continuum mode. Are there recommended setups to do this - perhaps ones that avoid known sources of interference or allow for easier data processing? (Or is this still new enough that part of the RSRO job is to figure out what to recommend?) I'm interested in S, C and X bands.

4. We plan to observe the same target (M31, a fixed point source) using two frequencies at six different epochs. At each epoch, we would like have an on-source integration time for 2 hrs, and we want to switch frequency every ~20 minutes. The separation between epochs is not even. We are uncertain about defining the sessions. First of all, shall we use one session for each epoch? If the answer is yes, how should we group the source/resource pairs within each session, given that we would like to switch frequency every 20 mins within each epoch? A relevant question is, by switching frequency, what would be roughly the total overhead?

5. I'm trying to set up an EVLA proposal, and I'm confused about sessions and resources. I want to observe 21 sources, spread around the sky. I want to observe them for ~20 minutes at C band and for about 35 minutes at X band, and I (think I) want to observe the two frequencies together: XCXCX with calibrators in between, or something similar. I have set up one resource for C band and one for X band. How do I get the two resources into one session? If I put them into two sessions , e.g 1 of 10 hours and one of 14, and they are block scheduled at the same LST, I won't be able to observe all the objects.

6. Okay, I am confused about submitting a case-use form. I tried to validata an RSRO proposal, and was told I needed to submit a case-use form. I filled out a case-use form, except for the legacy ID (the instructions say it will be added when I submit the proposal), and tried to submit it. I was told that I had to include the Legacy ID. I tried giving it the interim number (the number before I submit the proposal), and it said I had submitted the information. Then I went back and tried to validate the proposal again, and it told me I had to submit a use-case form. So, have I submitted the form or not? and, how do I get the proposal to validate? I believe I can't submit it until it validates - right?

7. I am trying to add the sessions to my EVLA proposal but it freezes each time. I justified and put the requested times per source in my tech justification? Would this be enough. I am trying again ...

8. I am preparing a proposal and I noticed that for the GBT, under resources, you can only specify 1, 2, or 4 spectral windows when you have 50 MHz bandwidth for the Spectrometer backend.. I thought this should be 1, 2, 4, or 8. Take a look at: GBT/2010-08-017.

9. I think you fixed the source precision problem when manually inputing the coordinates or when using NED/SIMBAD, but not when importing a file. Try importing the attached file. The Dec positions do not maintain their precision. Let me know if you get the same result.


Student Support

1. The student support link (for more info, details etc) should be, i think, https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/GB/Observing/NRAOStudentSupportProgram the existing link points to a deprecated, non-maintained wiki and the user is then sent to the top level of safe.nrao.edu , and has to find it him or her self.

2. I would like to request a modest amount of NRAO support for an undergraduate to work on data potentially resulting from a proposal I am planning to submit. I added him to the author list, but it says this proposal is not eligible. The student says he checked "undergraduate student" under profession. Jeff Magnum said: "Hmm. Should have worked. This looks like a PST problem. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that your student is an undergraduate. You will need to submit a helpdesk ticket in the PST to get this resolved."


Proposal Processing

1. I don't understand what happened, but thought I'd let you know what I saw in case others are also having problems. I hit the Print All button while looking at a draft proposal. It tried to bring the pdf up in Acroread (my default - Linux box). Acroread was already up as I had been looking at some papers and other documents. In fact it had been up for several days. This time, it started sucking all available cpu time (like 98% in top) and just kept going - like it was in an infinite loop. I had to kill it, which, since acroread does not have separate instances of itself for separate documents, knocked down all of my acroread windows (not happy camper here!). I then tried the Print All button again, and got normal behavior. Acroread had been up long enough that it is possible that the systems people did an upgrade in the mean time but I would have thought it was using the executable it started with.

2. All right, I have submitted my proposal. Now I want to withdraw it to change something. If I hit the withdraw button, will it come back as a draft proposal, or will I have to start all over?

3. I received an email from a collaborator telling me that the VLBA proposal we submitted was accepted (BC195; IMAGING THE MISDIRECTED QSO OF IRAS 09104+4109). Except I never received such an email. My kcavagno@uwaterloo.ca address went dead for a short time, did I miss an acceptance email? The my.nrao system does show the proposal as accepted. If it has been accepted, can the TAC letter and communication from the observation prep desk be emailed to me at: cavagnolo@oca.eu

4. This evening, while handling a ToO proposal, we were unable to phone the proposal's contact author because no phone number was given. Don't contact authors need to be fully registered and, therefore, have a phone number that shows on the coversheet?


Miscellaneous


Server (my.nrao.edu)

1. For whatever reasons, I've tried to submit a GBT proposal online before deadline yet always failed in loading up my pdf file. I even failed at submitting a ticket online. Now, I'm trying this again in the airport, yet it worked. I do hope there are some ways to have email or chatting option rather than entirely by web to report the problems. Anyway, just still hope that the proposal can be taken this time. The problem is that it simply took forever to replace sci. justification pdf file... At some point, it deleted old one, yet still taking forever to upload new one.

-- DanaBalser - 2010-10-19

This topic: Software > ProposalSubmissionTool > PSTFeedbackOctober2010
Topic revision: 2010-10-19, DanaBalser
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