What is the PST
The NRAO Proposal Submission Tool (PST) is a package for creating and submitting proposals for NRAO telescopes. The PST has been used for GBT observing proposals since June 2005, VLA observing proposals since January 2006, VLBA/HSA observing proposals since 2 June 2008, and GMVA (Global Millimeter VLBI Array) observing proposals since 8 July 2012.
The PST is a combination of HTML and Java that is intended to be run from any web browser with both Javascript and Cookies enabled. If either is not enabled, the PST will fail without warning. The PST is known to be compatible with any combination of:
- Operating System: Linux, Mac OS X (10.3 or greater), SunOS (5.10 only), Windows (XP only)
- Browser: Firefox (1.0 or greater), Safari (312 or greater for the 300 series [1.3.x OS] and 419 or greater for the 400 series [1.4.x OS]), Internet Explorer (6 or 7), Netscape (7 only)
The purpose of the PST is to create an XML document which contains an NRAO observing proposal. The XML document contains cover page information (investigator names, contact information, and so on) as well as scientific and technical justifications, and observation and scheduling requests.
The PST is designed to make the proposal submission process simple both for proposal authors, and for the NRAO staff processing the proposals. For NRAO support staff, the PST ensures that proposal information is supplied in a uniform and complete manner. Electronic submission means that the proposal information can easily be inserted into the scheduling database, without the tedious manual re-typing that was previously required.
To start the PST, enable Javascript and Cookies in your web browser, then just click here.
