Step 5 — Review & create
The final step lets you review the whole observation in one place and create it. Once created, the observation is visible to the scheduler and starts competing for telescope time.
The pre-create checklist
This step shows a summary checklist. All four must be green before the Create button enables:
- At least one grant selected (step 1).
- Target has a name and a resolved position (step 2).
- At least one data request present (step 3).
- Observation has a name (step 4 — identity sub-section).
A red item links back to the step that needs attention. You can jump back to any step from the stepper at the top of the editor.
The summary card on this page is read-only — it mirrors what you've configured across the previous steps so you can review without clicking through.
What happens when you create it
When you click Create, the server validates the observation — the same checklist plus quota checks and per-request-type validation (does the selected grant set actually reach a telescope that can fulfill this request? do the brightness model and SNR target produce a reasonable exposure time?) — and then creates it. If a check fails, you get a clear message about which one, and you can fix it and try again.
Not ready to create it yet?
This step also has a Save as draft button. It saves your in-progress observation spec so you can reopen it later from the editor hub and finish where you left off. Saving a draft does not create an observation — nothing is scheduled or charged, and it won't show up in your observation list. It's just your saved editor work, not a half-finished observation living on the server.
After you create it
Once the observation exists:
- Editing remains fully open. Unlike many platforms, Skynet does not freeze an observation once it's created. You can edit fields, swap requests, change the target, and update scheduling parameters at any time — the changes propagate to future tasks. Editing costs nothing extra; see "Credits and quotas" below.
- The scheduler starts evaluating it. Within one scheduler cycle (typically minutes), eligible tasks appear on the observation's detail page → tasks panel.
- You can watch it run. Head to the observation detail page — see Observation detail.
Credits and quotas
A common surprise worth calling out:
- Creating an observation costs nothing. You can create as many observations as you want without spending any credit.
- Credits are tallied as tasks are dispatched to telescopes. The scheduler records a charge against the funding account and grant each time a task is handed off; the observation's eventual cost is the sum of the dispatched tasks.
- Throttling is quota-driven. Accounts and grants don't carry a single "limit" — each can have zero or more quotas attached, defining caps like "max 500 credits per week" or "max 10 000 credits total." All active quotas must be satisfied; dispatch pauses as soon as any one of them would be exceeded.
- Quota-exceeded observations stall, they don't error. When a quota fills up the scheduler stops handing new tasks off; existing tasks continue, and dispatch resumes once the relevant quota period rolls over or new credits become available.
If you've created several observations and one of them isn't making progress, check the quotas on your account and grants before assuming a scheduling bug — quota state is by far the most common cause.
Removing an observation you don't want
If you create an observation and decide you don't need it, delete it from the observations list. (An observation that has already generated tasks carries execution history; cancel it instead of deleting.)