Arcsecond’s Observatory Portals help groups of people (observatories, institutes, universities, telescope hosts) gather together to perform astronomical observations.

It is extremely easy to create an Observatory Portal, and requires no paiement information whatsoever, in order for everyone to explore and discover freely. The most difficult part of this process is … to actually find a good name!

Step 1: Login or register to Arcsecond.

Step 2.a (optional): If you haven’t done it yet, open your Emails settings and verify your email address.

Step 2.b: Open your Membership settings, and click “Create Observatory Portal”

Step 3: In the modal, choose a subdomain name, and click “Create”.

Welcome to your portal! Upon creation, you will be immediately redirected to it. As a portal creator, you are the first “superadmin” of the portal. It gives you complete control on it. See our documentation for more.

The first thing to do is to associate an Observing Site to your Portal, to indicate to Arcsecond where your observations will take place. For that, open the “Resources” menu and click “Observing Sites”.

You can either create a whole new site (which will remain private – that is; it will not be visible in Arcsecond’s Encyclopedia), or attach an existing one.

From your home page, you can explore the extended domains Arcsecond is the only one to propose: “Nights”, “Targets” and “Data”. In addition to these core domains, Observatory Portals aim at providing a complete platform for running the operations of an observatory.

Hence, the “Operations” menu where you can find in particular the “Observatory Schedule”, a powerful calendar linked to your resources: portal members, observing sites and telescopes.

Next, you can:

  • Freely invite as many friends & colleagues as you wish,
  • Create a Night Plan or a Night Log to discover how Arcsecond works around Targets & Nights,
  • Upload some data, and discover the automatic processing made by Arcsecond.

Clear skies!

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