The Submillimeter Array (SMA) is an 8-element interferometer which operates in the 180-700 GHz range located
atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It is a collaborative project between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
(SAO) and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) and is funded by the Smithsonian
Institution and the Academia Sinica. The University of Hawaii (UH) receives a fixed percentage of all
time on the telescopes of Mauna Kea. As such, the observing time at the SMA is shared among these partners
at the SAO:ASIAA:UH levels of 72:15:13. The nature of interferometric observing makes keeping track of these
partner shares challenging. Since a typical successful interferometric observation could last anywhere from 3-10
hours for it to have sufficient uv-coverage, it does not necessarily make sense to divide the observing time up
simply by counting hours. In this talk I will summarize the strategy devised at the SMA for keeping track of
partner time shares as well as the tools used to make these numbers transparent to all affiliations.
We present a new suite of web-based software tools developed at the
Submillimeter Array which allow the tracking of projects from the
proposal stage all the way to successful completion of the
observations. The web-based nature of these tools allows easy
world-wide coordination and collaboration through all aspects of a
science project, from proposal writing, time allocation, observing
script preparation, scheduling, and finally observations. These tools
are based on a project system data-flow which was developed after
extensive discussion with proposing scientists, time allocation
committee members, support astronomers, and engineers responsible for
data quality. This system allows every stage of a project to be
tracked, with proposals, time allocation comments, observing scripts,
observation schedules, observing logs, data files, data quality
reports, etc, all organized in a simple and convenient structure. In
addition to making the data more readily accessible to the scientists,
this system allows very accurate tracking of other telescope
operational parameters, such as efficiency, share-holder's time
fractions, and instrument performance, to name just a few. We will
present the underlying design for the project system data-flow, and
show the software used to ensure each project is tracked completely
during its path from proposal to completed science observation.
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