Help with Go Observing

Go Observing is at the core of The Schools' Observatory - it is the system that guides users through the process of choosing observations, checking on their progress, and downloading the data when it is ready.

Obviously, there is a lot going on "behind the scenes" to make this as smooth as possible.

Here are a few frequently asked questions that can help you to understand the system and make the best possible use of it:

What does Go Observing actually do?

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This work by Liverpool Telescope is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International

Essentially, Go Observing is there so that you work as closely as possible to how a professional astronomer works with the telescope, but without getting bogged down in technical details.

This is necessary because using a professional telescope is a complicated process.

There are many difficult astronomical and technical steps, from choosing suitable objects to deciding the instrument, filter and exposure time, right up to the final submission to a telescope.

Go Observing has been designed to hide all the unnecessary details and leave just the important and interesting decisions. Of course, what is interesting and important will depend on what you are hoping to do (particularly from an educational standpoint), so the system is very flexible. It adjusts to the age group of the user and guides you through the process via a series of questions and simple choices.

The aim is to make sure you have good options for possible observations, but without the constant disappointment due to poor choices of object, filter, exposure time, etc.

Once you have made your choice, Go Observing will turn it into a form that a telescope can understand, send out the request, monitor what is happening, and keep you updated.

How long will my observations take?

There are many factors that determine how long you may have to wait. Some of these are predictable; for example the fraction of a night that an object is observable, what the phase of the moon is, when a moon of Jupiter completes a full orbit, and so on.

These factors are included when Go Observing calculates the "visibility" colour bars that you see when requesting observations or choosing an object to observe.

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This work by The Schools' Observatory is licensed under All rights reserved

Other factors, such as weather, are not predictable. Weather permitting, observations with "excellent" or "good" chances of being observed will usually be done that same night they are requested. And because the telescopes you can access are in many locations around the world, you may not have to wait until it gets dark in your local time zone! When it's daytime for you, it's the middle of the night elsewhere, and a telescope working there could receive your request.

This is usually true for "reasonable" objects as well, although some nights the telescopes are busier than others, so these may have to wait a night or two.

Another factor to consider is the size of the telescope needed to complete your observation. There are many 1-metre and 0.4-metre telescopes on the Las Cumbres Observatory network, so requests sent to these will usually be done quickly.

We keep a close eye on "turn-around time" for observations and sometimes "tweak" the system to make sure it is always running as efficiently as possible.

It is also worth noting that the telescopes don't know (or care) who requested a particular observation, so your requests have exactly the same chance as those from professional astronomers.

Are there any backups if my observation is not done in time?

Yes. All observations taken since the project began are available from the Archive.

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This work by The Schools' Observatory is licensed under All rights reserved

For a short period after they are taken (usually about 3 months), only the person requesting them can access the data, but after that all observations are available to any user.

You can search through the archive in a number of ways. For example, by object name or by the kind of Observing Programme. There is also an "advanced" version of the search form for even more detailed searches.

So there should be no problem if you are unlucky with the weather and do not have the observations you want for a particular lesson, or if you just want to explore the possibilities quickly and easily.

Are there any limits to the number of requests?

No, there are no limits to the number of observations you can request. There are two reasons why we can do this without risking overloading the telescopes:

1. The Go Observing system is not totally open-ended, so there is an automatic limit to the total number of requests for any one night (although this limit is very large).
2. If identical requests are made by more than one user, only a single observation is taken and given to both the users. However, this is never done retrospectively. So, if you request an observation of Jupiter a couple minutes after one was taken, another will be taken just for you.

This is very similar to the system for professional astronomers and helps get observations back to people with the minimum delay possible. It is far quicker, for example, to take one observation of Saturn and give it to 50 people than take 50 separate observations!

Can I choose to observe anything?

No, not quite. As mentioned above, observing is a complicated process and mistakes can easily be made. We have therefore decided to restrict the choice of objects to those that we know will give sensible results.

For instance, many people would like to observe the Andromeda galaxy. However, this is much bigger than the field-of-view of the instruments on the telescopes. In fact, if we use the Liverpool Telescope as an example, Andromeda is thousands of times the size of the field-of-view of the main camera!

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This work by Sloan Digital Sky Survey/The Schools' Observatory is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

We have narrowed a database of over 20,000 galaxies to a few hundred that we know will produce good results. From these, Go Observing will select the handful that are best at a particular time for you to choose between. We also change and add new objects as time passes, so the choices constantly evolve.

In this way, we make sure that people are not disappointed with their observations, which would be discouraging and counter-productive. However, this will sometimes mean that your favourite object is not observable.

If you have a particular preference or would like to see different objects included, please email us at SchoolsObs@ljmu.ac.uk and we can discuss with you the best way to observe your choices.

Does everybody have the same choices?

Not quite. One of the strengths of Go Observing is that it can adjust to the type and age of the user. A primary school child will obviously have different interests from an A-level physics student.

Also, a Teacher account gives access to a wider range of observing programmes than a Student account. Because of this, teachers can happily let their students work on their own and not worry about them getting lost or overloaded with too many choices.

Teachers can set up entire class sets of usernames using the Registration Management tool in the "My account" menu.

Why can't I find one of my old observations?

You can view your list of observations using My Observations. However, to stop the list from getting too long, observations that are more than a year old will be removed.

But you can search for your old observations using the Archive.

Is there an easy way to make the same observation again?

This might be useful if an observation request was unsuccessful.

1. Log in to your account.
2. Choose ‘My Observations’ in the Go Observing menu.
3. In the ‘actions’ column, click the repeat arrow ( ) for the observation you want to repeat.

Can I delete an observation or request?

1. Log in to your account.
2. Choose ‘My Observations’ in the Go Observing menu.
3. In the ‘actions’ column, click the bin icon ( ) for the observation you want to delete.