Skip to content

Projects Guide

Document Version: 1.1 | Last Updated: March 2026

Projects are the primary way to organize, track, and collaborate on observation programs in the Science Scheduler. Every observation belongs to a project, giving you a central place to monitor progress, manage team access, and access your data.

What Are Projects?

A project groups related observations under a common goal. Whether you're running a semester-long variable star monitoring campaign, a student imaging lab, or a one-night deep-sky session, projects provide:

  • Organization — group observations by scientific objective
  • Collaboration — share access with team members using granular permissions
  • Tracking — monitor progress with automatic statistics (completion rate, exposure time, file counts)
  • Access control — control who can view, edit, or manage observations within the project

Project Types

Choose a type that best describes your project's purpose:

Type Use For
Research Scientific investigations, published research, long-term monitoring campaigns
Education Student labs, coursework, teaching demonstrations
Outreach Public events, community science, media projects
Personal Individual imaging projects, hobby observations
Testing Equipment testing, calibration verification, system checkout

The project type is informational — it helps organize projects in listings and reports but does not affect scheduling behavior.

Creating a Project

Required Fields

Field Description Constraints
Name Descriptive project name 2–100 characters
Code Short unique identifier Uppercase letters, numbers, and hyphens (e.g., WASP-12B-TRANSIT, ASTRO-101-LAB)
Description What the project is about Up to 1,000 characters

Optional Fields

Field Description
Type Project type (research, education, outreach, personal, testing). Default: research

How to Create

  1. Navigate to Projects from the main menu
  2. Click New Project
  3. Fill in the required fields (name, code, description)
  4. Set the project type and any optional fields
  5. Click Create

You can also create a project inline when submitting an observation — click + Create New Project in the project selector.

Ownership

Every project has an owner. The owner type determines who controls the project:

Owner Type Description
User Owned by an individual user. You automatically become the owner when you create a project.
Observatory Owned by an observatory. Requires observatory admin permissions to create.
Organization Owned by an organization. Requires organization management permissions to create.

Ownership Transfer

Project ownership can be transferred to a different user, observatory, or organization:

  1. Open the project
  2. Navigate to the Management tab
  3. Click Transfer Ownership
  4. Select the new owner type and the specific user, observatory, or organization
  5. Confirm the transfer

All transfers are recorded in an audit trail for accountability. The previous owner retains member access unless explicitly removed.

Member Management

Projects support multi-user collaboration with five granular permissions:

Permission What It Allows
Can View See the project, its observations, and files. Granted to all members by default.
Can Edit Modify observations and project settings
Can Manage Members Add and remove team members, change their permissions
Can Delete Delete observations within the project
Can Manage Storage Configure external storage options for the project

Adding Members

  1. Open your project
  2. Navigate to the Management tab
  3. Click Manage Members
  4. Search for the user to add
  5. Set their permissions
  6. Click Add

Permission Guidelines

Role Recommended Permissions
Observer / Student Can View
Team member / Collaborator Can View, Can Edit
Lab instructor / Co-PI Can View, Can Edit, Can Manage Members
Co-owner All permissions

Tip

Only the project owner can transfer ownership or force-delete the project. The owner's permissions cannot be modified by other members.

Project Settings

Each project has configurable settings that affect its observations:

Default Priority

Set a default priority (1–10) for new observations created in this project. Individual observations can override this value. Default: 5.

Project Status

Projects move through a lifecycle:

Status Meaning
Active Currently accepting and executing observations
Paused Temporarily halted — no new observations are scheduled, but existing data is preserved
Completed All objectives met — project is finished but data remains accessible
Archived Project is no longer active — stored for reference

Change the status from the project's Management tab.

Statistics and Progress

The project overview automatically tracks:

Metric Description
Total Observations Number of observations in the project
Completed Successfully finished observations
Failed Observations that encountered errors
Pending Observations waiting to execute
Success Rate Percentage of completed vs. total attempted
Total Exposure Time Cumulative shutter-open time across all observations
Total Files Number of captured FITS files
Last Observation Date of the most recent completed observation

Statistics update automatically as observations complete.

Deleting a Project

Projects with observations cannot be deleted unless you use force delete, which permanently removes:

  • The project itself
  • All observations in the project
  • All membership records

Warning

Force delete is irreversible. Note that force delete removes observation and membership records from the database but does not automatically delete uploaded FITS files from MinIO storage. If you need to reclaim storage, FITS files must be cleaned up separately. Consider archiving instead if you want to preserve the data.

To delete a project:

  1. Open the project
  2. Navigate to the Management tab
  3. Click Delete Project
  4. If observations exist, confirm force deletion

Announcements

Project owners and admins can send announcements to all project members. Click the announcement button on the My Projects page to create an announcement with a title, message, severity level, and optional expiration date.

For organization-owned projects, all organization members automatically receive project announcements (organization membership grants indirect project access).

For full details on announcement features, see Observatory Administration — Announcements.

Working with Projects

Assigning Observations to Projects

When creating an observation, select the project from the Project dropdown. You can also create a new project inline. See Creating Observations for the full observation creation workflow.

Viewing Project Files

The project page shows all targets and observations in a hierarchy. Click the folder icon in any observation row to open the Observation Files page for that observation.

External Storage

Projects can be configured with external storage destinations so that FITS files are automatically copied to cloud storage. See External Storage for setup instructions.