The Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC)

POOPSY

Phase One Observing Proposal SYstem

User Guide

Introduction:

The Phase One Observing Proposal SYstem (POOPSY) is an electronic observing proposal preparation utility developed by the National Research Council of Canada's (NRC) Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC). The system has been designed to eventually be used for a number of telescopes and can be easily configured for various languages, although currently only English and French are supported.

The final, submitted proposals are generated by LaTeX. As a result, one can still use familiar formatting commands when entering text. However, with POOPSY your proposal can now be prepared in its entirety, previewed, and submitted from a single WWW interface. All of the proposal information is stored in a secure database where it can be easily retrieved and edited on the WWW by a registered, password protected user. Submitted proposals can then be easily accessed and used by the appropriate TAC, and accepted proposals can be examined by relevant telescope staff for scheduling, statistics generation, etc.

How the system works:

All of the information required for an observing request can be entered via a series of Web forms. Some of this is selected from pre-defined menus, for example the instrument selection, and some is entered as text. At any time the information you have entered can be saved and then retrieved at a later date when you continue working on your proposal or if you need to make any changes.

Many details of your application must be entered on the web page. However, some major sections of the proposal, including the scientific justification and technical feasibility sections, can be edited by the user off-line and then uploaded back into the database system.

At any time you can have the system generate LaTeX, postscript, or Acrobat PDF files which then enable you to view the current state of your proposal. (You can download the free Acrobat Reader from Adobe if you do not already have it installed. Note: If you print the proposal from Acrobat Reader, make sure you un-select the "download fonts once" option from the print configuration display!)

By retrieving and copying the complete LaTeX source of your proposal to your local computer you can edit major sections indicated by comments in the LaTeX file (the abstract, scientific justification, references, technical justification, and other recent time allocations) off-line and then upload this file back into the system for storage. However, any changes made to the sections which must be entered via the Web pages will be ignored.

A short LaTeX guide is available on-line as well as a selection of frequently used text strings which have been defined for your convenience

System Requirements:

For successful use of POOPSY, we recommend the following freely available software:

Additional Help:

If you have any questions or problems concerned with technical aspects of POOPSY, please contact the POOPSY support team for the telescope you are applying to in the following table:

TELESCOPE EMAIL Supported languages
CFHT poopsy@cfht.hawaii.edu English et Français
DAO David.Bohlender at nrc-cnrc.gc.ca English et Français

For telescope-related questions you must contact the appropriate facility:

Acknowledgements:

The CADC gratefully acknowledges extensive insights provided by the successful NOAO Observing Proposal System. The LaTeX guides have been cloned from this site.