XMM-Newton Phase II RPS Users Manual

5.3 Formal checks on a proposal

When all entries are made and all proposal pages have been successfully committed to memory, have XRPS go through all observations again to perform a few basic checks (essentially the observation and exposure times), by hitting the ''Check Proposal'' button.

If all entries are formally correct and no compulsory entries are missing, XRPS will report an ''End of check - PASSED'' status for each observation individually.

Figure 19: Screen shot of a proposal that has not passed the formal XRPS check. Below the observation and the exposure summary, the error report appears. In this case the EPIC MOS 1 exposure is exceeding the allowed observation time of 1260000s by 5377s. On the other hand the RGS 2 exposure is using less than 97% of the total observation time available. An error is issued as well because the exposure duration of an OM exposure is outside the allowed range. In all cases the user has to go back and change the exposure times. This can be done easily following the link at the end of the error report line. A warning is issued and displayed at the top because the Abstract field has not been completed.

XRPS will calculate the sum of all exposures, overheads and eventual offset (delay between individual exposures) times for each of the XMM-Newton instruments per observation and compare this with the observation duration. If the sum is higher than the observation duration, XRPS will raise an error condition. If the sum for the X-ray instruments is lower than 97% of the total observation duration, another error message is issued. In both cases the exposure times have to be corrected. For OM observations only the maximum limit gives an error while exposure times less than 97% of the total observation time just issue a warning message.

An example is displayed in Fig. 19. In this example the check failed and the user is warned that the EPIC MOS1 exposure time, including overhead times, exceeds the allowed observation time, and that one of the instruments is using less than 97% of the total observation time available.

In this case the user is asked to correct the appropriate entries. This procedure must be repeated by using the navigation tool in the left-hand frame to go back to the sheet forms and apply the necessary changes until the proposal passes all the checks.

For a more detailed check of the proposal's observational parameters use the ''Technical Evaluation'' button (see § 5.6).