Skip to content

Observers

This section is for everyone who uses Skynet — researchers, educators, students, alert subscribers, citizen scientists — to get data from telescopes on the network.

If you're a telescope owner trying to bring an observatory onto the network, you want the Telescope Owners section instead.

What an observer actually does

End to end, an observer's journey on Skynet looks like this:

  1. Sign in through the web app. Your personal account lets you submit observations to any observing account you have access to — personal or organizational.
  2. Pick a place to spend telescope time. Observations are funded through observing accounts, which bundle one or more queue access grants on one or more telescopes. Each account (and each grant under it) can carry quotas that throttle how much you can consume in a given period. Most observers end up with two or three accounts they cycle between (a class account, a research-group account, their personal first-light account).
  3. Decide what kind of work you're doing. A standalone observation is fine for one-off requests. For anything sustained — a campaign, a class assignment, a coordinated follow-up — group your observations into a project. Some projects start from the project catalog — a ready-made project that pre-fills the editor for a specific science workflow.
  4. Build the observation in the editor. The editor walks you through five steps: pick the funding account, pick the target, pick the data requests (filters, exposure mode, SNR target, …), configure scheduling and instrument-selection, then create the observation. See The observation editor.
  5. Watch it run. Once created, the scheduler picks an eligible telescope and breaks the observation into tasks. The observation detail page is where you track progress.
  6. Get your data. Results, processed data, and raw files all flow into the observation. Results and Files cover the data-side surface; the tools pages cover analysis surfaces Skynet provides.

The rest of this section drills into each step.

Things observers commonly ask first

"Where does my time come from?" From observing accounts. Your account lists which telescopes' queues you can submit to and what quotas govern how much you can consume. See Observing accounts.

"What's the difference between a project and an observation?" An observation is a single request. A project groups related observations that share scientific intent. See Projects vs. observations.

"How do I get my data after a successful observation?" Open the observation detail page; results and files are available there as soon as processing finishes. See Files.

"Can I submit observations programmatically?" Yes — the public API is the same one the web app uses. Start at Developers → Getting started (coming in Phase 3) for auth, conventions, and quickstarts.