Before suggesting a new observation, please make sure to read this help page carefully or watch the video!
If you are a Gold, Platinum or Diamond subscriber and you have submitted at least one Advanced Request that has already been completed you can suggest what our next One-Click Observations or Bundles should be.
The future schedule of One-Click Observations is shown in the Future Observations section. Everybody can upvote a specific observation so that the global priority of each observation is entirely governed by the community of our subscribers (and, obviously, by the constraints of each observation).
The specific observations that are on the schedule, however, are based on all the suggestions that our Gold, Platinum or Diamond members have submitted through the Suggest Observations section.
In this section, you are able to propose a target, specify its exact coordinates, chose the telescope, the filters you require and the exposure times for each filter. This submission form is very similar to the one used in the Advanced Request section. You will also be able to tell us why you think this is a good target for our future schedule, including your motivation whenever possible.
Our staff of astronomers and astrophotographers will then regularly check your submissions and will either accept or decline your suggestion. You will receive an email letting you know if your suggestion has been approved or not.
Note that you will not be able to specify the total exposure time of the requested observation. From your suggestion, if accepted, we will generate one or more One-Click Observations. For instance, if you propose a new target that is not present in our archive yet, we will likely generate 5 or more repeats of the same One-Click Observation.
If the suggestion is approved, You will be able to monitor the progress of these One-Click Observations from the Suggest New Observation section. All the One-Click Observations generated from the suggestion will be automatically grabbed for you, and you won't need to pay for them.
Make sure your target suggestion is novel and worth approving
First of all, you should check that the target you're proposing hasn't been observed yet, or isn't present in our future schedule.
To do that, navigate to All Observations or Future Observations, and search by Object name, to verify that we don't have a significant number of observations for this target already.
Note that, however, sometimes getting more data on a target we already have observed might be good motivation! For instance, if we have only two One-Click Observations of a faint target, and we really need more data to create a decent image, then you should suggest getting more data.
Another good motivation is to get H-alpha for a spiral galaxy for which we already have lots of LRGB data to highlight regions of star formation. Or to get RGB data for star-coloring of a nebula already observed in narrowband.
Make sure your target is observable!
Even more importantly, you should check that the target you're proposing is observable.
You can use the tool by Jarmo Ruuth AstroMosaic Telescope Planner to verify that the observability of the target is good. One you input the target name, select the telescope, and check the graph on the right showing the target altitude as a function of time. You should verify that the target is above 30 degrees for the majority of the night.
This tool is also helpful to check that the target field of view for the chosen telescope is good.
If you have any question, don't hesitate to message us using the chat on the bottom right of each page, or contact us directly at support@telescope.live.
You should also watch the video below, which shows you a step-by-step guide of the suggestion procedure: