Help for Institutions

This help page is intended for Institutions that have bought MMT or Magellan nights from the CfA. Please submit your approved programs into this system. This will allow us to account for the nights during the CfA time allocation process, will facilitate scheduling with the Observatories, and will enable Observatory staff to easily find PI contact information. The process is as follows:

• Sign in as an institutional user, one account per institution please.
• Create, modify, and submit your approved programs.
• Note: if the same program will use multiple instruments, you must create and submit a separate (even if identical) proposal for each instrument, that is how our bookkeeping works.

Createa new account

• Please pick a username that clearly identifies your institution.
• Contact email should be the point person at your institution.
• use the First name as a more detailed name, like Astronomical Institute and the Last name field as the name of you institution like Academia Sinica
• make sure to check the Institution checkbox.
• Do not enter any demographic information.

Enter approved programs

Once signed in you will be on the Institutional proposals page. “Proposals” in this context refers to your approved programs, the programs getting nights; everything entered here goes directly to the scheduling stage of CfA time allocation process.

Press the "Create new proposal" button at the top of the page to enter an approved program. Mandatory fields are marked by an asterisk (*):

• PI last name, PI first name and PI email should be the name and email of the principal investigator of the approved program, the astronomer responsible for the observations.
• Title is the title of the proposal.
• Telescope and instrument are the telescope and instrument being used.
• The number of dark, gray, or bright nights assigned to this program.
• Acceptable dates are the best date range for the intended observation.
• Magnitude range, number of targets, and approximate RA and Dec coordinate range are required for scheduling.
• Abstract will appear on the cover page. Note that this is parsed through LaTeX, so beware of special characters.
• Please use the “scientific justification” to upload the PI’s proposal. This is not mandatory but is very helpful for scheduling (clicking the link or button will allow you to upload a pdf).
• Press the "Save" button. This will generate the proposal in our system.
• To submit, press “Create TAC pdf”, and then press “Submit”.
• Proposals are not received until they are Submitted.
• Submitted proposals go to the active TAC session, like semester 2022A. The active session will close at the CfA proposal deadline, which is NOON Eastern Time on the 2nd Tuesday of April and October. For exact dates, check the TAC web pages.
• Do not forget to submit before the deadline!