Phase 2 Proposal Preparation:
The P2PP Tool

What Is P2PP?

The Phase 2 Preparation (P2PP) Tool is used to create and manage Observation Blocks (OBs). These OBs are used to describe observing sequences for all ESO instruments, both in Visitor Mode and in Service Mode. For further information, see the P2PP User Manual. In Service Mode P2PP is also used to submit the other elements composing the Phase 2 package, including finding charts, a Readme file, and possibly ephemeris files for moving targets.

Please note that the ID and password for the use of P2PP are your ESO User Portal username and password.

Current Version: P2PP 2.13.1 - Only P2PP 2.13.1 can be used to prepare, submit, or retrieve any OBs from the ESO OB Repository intended to be executed from this point hence during Period 81 and 82.

Older news

• P2PP 2.12 has been ported to Java 1.5. Our P2PP download page will allow you to retrieve the appropriate version of the Java Runtime Environment, if it is not yet installed on your computer.
• Starting with this version of P2PP, the differential velocities for moving targets are to be specified directly in the target package, and not in the acquisition template anymore. Please check Section 5.5.3 of the P2PP User Manual for more d etails.
• The README file for Service Mode runs is now integrated within P2PP and should not be submitted separately as a plain text file. In this way, the entire Phase 2 submission now takes place from within P2PP.
• The Ephemeris files for moving targets must now be attached to their corresponding OBs, in a way analogous to the way that finding charts are attached to their OBs since Period 73.
• The P2PP-submit mechanism used to notify to ESO the completion of the Phase 2 submission process is now also integrated in P2PP. The e-mail to p2pp-submit@eso.org that users were requested to send at the end of their Phase 2 preparation is thus replaced now by just clicking a button in the P2PP main GUI.
• Since Period 74, the constraint set has been customized for each instrument, and is now distributed as a part of the Instrument Package. The change is transparent to the user. See the P2PP User Manual for more details.
• Since Period 73, finding charts for Service Mode runs must be produced as JPEG files, attached to the OBs, and submitted to the ESO Database as a component of the OBs using the Finding Chart facility in P2PP.

Future developments

Planned important upgrades to be included in future versions of P2PP are described in a separate page

Problem reports

Please report any problems with the installation or use of P2PP to the ESO User Support Department

Supported Platforms

In principle, P2PP 2.13 will work within any Java Virtual Machine which supports the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5.0. It has been reported to work on a variety of Unix platforms and Linux distributions, as well as MacOS X. Note: the installation kit which we provide does not allow to run the tool under Windows.

At present, the official ESO integration and testing platform for P2PP is Scientific Linux 4.3.

We provide the installation kit for P2PP in the form of a tarball (see below). You should have Java 1.5 installed on your machine to run the software. As a courtesy we also provide ready-to-use Java tarballs for some platforms.

Although ESO is not able to guarantee that P2PP will work correctly on all platforms, support is available on a best-effort basis from the ESO User Support Department.

P2PP Download and Installation

Please use our dedicated registration page to access the P2PP files.

Note to users in sites with tight security policies: Some sites do not allow direct remote connections over arbitrary ports, thus preventing the direct connection between the P2PP tool in the local installation and the application server at ESO. This difficulty can be normally circumvented by making use of HTTP tunnelling, by which the connection is rerouted through the HTTP proxy server. Setting up P2PP to use HTTP tunnelling is described in the P2PP User Manual, as well as in this Technical note.

P2PP User Manual and related documents

Current Version: 9 (13 November 2007)

The P2PP User Manual is available for download (with figures; PDF file).

On-line Reference Guide on the Import/Export procedure

A detailed Import/Export reference guide is maintained on-line. See the P2PP User Manual for a detailed description on the usage of the Import/Export mechanism.

P2PP Tutorials

P2PP tutorials for a number of instruments are available:

• AMBER
• CRIRES
• FLAMES
• FORS
• HAWK-I
• ISAAC
• MIDI
• NACO
• SINFONI
• UVES
• VIMOS
• VISIR

Also available are:

• a tutorial on the attachment of finding charts and ephemeris files to OBs.
• a tutorial on filling out the README file with P2PP.

P2PP for the Public Surveys on VISTA