Phase II Overview

All proposals that have been recommended for time by the NTACs and that involve either facility instruments or queue-mode non-facility instruments must go through Phase II.  The deadlines for the Phase II process are advertised each semester on the "special instructions" page.

Data are extracted from successful Phase I proposals used to construct a skeletal description of each observation whose details must be defined or further refined in Phase II. Investigators are notified as part of their ITAC feedback, via the relevant National Gemini Office or NTAC, with retrieval instructions for the Phase II skeleton. The skeletons are retrieved from a remote-access database located at the Observatory. The user may save programs locally as XML files, although the completed observations must be returned to the Observatory by storing them in the database again. Observations are defined using the Observing Tool (OT) for all facility (and other selected) instruments.  Visiting instrument observations must also go through a Phase II process using the OT.

After completion of the detailed OT definition, the observations are returned to the National Gemini Office or Gemini Observatory for checking. For established instruments, the National Gemini Offices provide the first level of Phase II support. (For new instruments or modes, and for higher-level queries, Gemini Observatory staff provide Phase II support - support staff are listed on the queue and classical schedule web pages). After checking by NGO staff the Gemini Contact Scientist (CS) is notified that the observations are ready for final checks. The CS carries out a final verification before setting the observation status to "Ready", which prompts the Active Observing Database to notify the investigators that their program is now active. (If there is a problem with the observation definition, the files are returned to the National Office for further iterations with the investigators). Once in this database the observations are available to be executed. Queue investigators have no direct access to the Active Observing Database; any requests for subsequent changes to observation details must be made via their CS. On-site (classical) observers may access their observations in the Active Observing Database directly using the OT.

Modification of approved queue programs must be made via the queue change request process.

Last update June 25, 2008; Bryan Miller