Visits to Process

This area shows which visits will be processed by the Orbit Planner. Those visits in BLACK have not changed since the last run of the Orbit Planner, and therefore do not need any processing. Those visits in RED have changed since the last Orbit Planner run, and will be processed. To view the Orbit Planner results, select the visit of interest in this area. Note that if only 1 visit is listed, the Orbit Planner display will automatically show the results for that visit.

Set Context

Before initiating the Orbit Planner, you need to select the visit or visits you want to process. To do this, select the visit(s) in the Hierarchical (Tree) Editor by either clicking the Visit container, or clicking on any exposure in the Visit. Note that if you select the Visits container, all visits will be selected. When you go to the Orbit Planner, you will see the selected visits in the Visits to Process area.

Update Display

To process the visit(s), hit the Update Display button. If the visit(s) are out of date (and hence in need of processing), this button will be active and RED. If the visit(s) are all current, this button will be inactive (and greyed out). During processing, the main display area of the Orbit Planner is greyed out, and the spinning flower (upper right) is active.

Zoom

To change the magnification of the Orbit Planner display, select the magnification factor at the right. This function is particularly useful if you have many short exposures.

Exposure

Each exposure is shown in the timeline. Different colors and shadings are used to indicate different types of exposures.

Placing the cursor on the exposure (or the exposure label) will bring up a tool-tip providing the details of the exposure (including overheads).

Exposure Label

Placing the cursor on the exposure label (or the exposure) will bring up a tool-tip providing the details of the exposure (including overheads).

If the symbol is next to the label, the exposure may be adjusted using the auto-adjust function.

Unused Visibility

This shows the amount of unused orbital visibility in the orbit. You can adjust the exposure times of your observations (either manually or with the Auto-Adjust function) to reduce this time (ideally to zero). Note, however, that instrument overheads and/or exposure time quanitization (WFC3/IR) may limit your ability to use all the time in an orbit. However, since the orbital visibility time shown is an average value (the visibility for the actual orbit used may be slightly longer or slightly shorter), reducing unused orbital visibilities of less than ~15 seconds is not really useful.

Buffer Dumps

The black bars show when the buffer dumps will occur during the orbit. Placing the cursor on the bars will bring up a tool-tip showing the start time and duration of the dump.

Parallel Observations

Coordinated parallel observations are displayed beneath the timeline. The details of the exposures are available from a tool-tip, just as for the prime observations.

Display Units

Select the units (seconds or minutes) that you wish the Orbit Planner timeline to be displayed in. Note that the exposure times in the tool-tips will change to make the graphical display.

Auto Adjust

Initiate the Auto-Adjust function. This function (see the training movie for details) will use the selected sub-exposures (or all sub-exposures in none are selected) to fill each orbit in the visit in an automated fashion. The unused orbital visibility in each orbit is equally divided (as much as possible given instrument constraints) amongst the selected sub-exposures. The function, which takes changing instrument overheads (if applicable) into account, will iterate until less than 10 seconds of unused orbital visibility remains in each orbit. The revised exposure times will appear in the Actual Duration field in the Sub Exposures folder, and will NOT be reflected in the Exposure time keyword of the exposure.

Clear Orbit Numbers and Actual Durations

Clear the Orbit Numbers and Actual Durations for all exposures in the proposal and reprocess the visit. For more on sub-exposures and the Orbit Number/Actual Duration fields, see the training movie on Sub-exposures.

Clear Actual Durations

Clear the Actual Durations for all exposures in the proposal and reprocess the visit. For more on sub-exposures and the Orbit Number/Actual Duration fields, see the training movie on Sub-exposures.