Sourced from: OpenASTRO Dashboard.md

Dashboard and UI¶

This document covers the product experience — what users see when they interact with OpenAstro. The audience is two different people: the telescope operator (contributing observations) and the researcher (consuming network data or monitoring campaigns).

Core Product Philosophy¶

The greedy handoff algorithm and the geographic distribution are the network's big technical selling points — but most users should not need to understand them. The product goal is "the Apple of distributed data collection": a user downloads the app, and it just works. Everything different about distributed telescope control should be invisible to the operator.

"The user doesn't even feel like there is anything different to a normal app."

Selling Points to Surface in the UI¶

The greedy handoff — show users when their telescope is in a live handover chain with another site. Make it feel like being part of something.
Global reach — the live world map (see Friction Reduction strategies) showing active nodes and current coverage is both functional and visually compelling.
Real science contribution — every submitted observation should immediately show up in the campaign progress bar. Instant feedback.

Problems the Network Fixes (Worth Showing Users)¶

2-metre class telescopes are oversubscribed — we take long-duration transient monitoring load off them.
There is no adequate infrastructure for continuous long-term transient observations — we fill this gap.

These two points should be somewhere accessible on the dashboard or the "Why it matters" landing page section, so contributors understand the context of their work.

Project Complexity Tiers (For the Dashboard)¶

Not all science cases should be surfaced to all users. A complexity indicator on each campaign helps route the right observers to the right tasks.

Project	Complexity	Notes
Stellar occultations	⭐⭐	Good entry point; clear timing requirement, binary pass/fail result
Exoplanet transits (TTV)	⭐⭐⭐	Moderate; needs good photometric calibration
GRB/kilonova follow-up	⭐⭐⭐⭐	Time-critical, requires alert integration; not for beginners
Reverberation mapping	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Stage 5 capability; needs greedy handoff + heterogeneous stacking + filters

Who the Network Is For (Dashboard Copy Direction)¶

What? An array of pro-am telescopes that coordinate by downloading a client app.

Why? 1. Large numbers of transient events are missed due to insufficient telescope coverage. 2. Amateur astronomers gain access to a larger coordinated network for their hobby. 3. More people learn about distributed computing and the spirit of science. 4. More data.

Who? - Amateur astronomers with Go-To mounts and CCD/CMOS cameras - University teaching observatories with underutilised idle time - Small college observatories looking for student research projects - Private observatory owners wanting their hardware to contribute science

Backbone Technologies to Explain Simply¶

The following technical systems should have plain-language explanations available in the UI help docs:

Heterogeneous Stacking — combining images from telescopes with different optics and sensors
Heterogeneous Spectra Stacking — combining spectroscopic data across sites
Greedy Handoff — passing a target from one telescope to the next as the Earth rotates

Other Facilities in the Same Space¶

Noting these in the UI context or "about" section helps position OpenAstro clearly:

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — wide-field survey, not a follow-up network
LCO (Las Cumbres Observatory) — professional, subscription-based; OpenAstro is the citizen-science analogue

Open UI Ideas (To Develop)¶

Live world map showing active nodes, current coverage arcs, and handover chains in progress
Personal contribution dashboard: total photons contributed, campaigns participated in, papers acknowledged
"Tonight's target" — scheduler surfacing the single best observation for a given user's site
Campaign progress bars showing collective network exposure accumulation toward goal
Badge/achievement system (see Community Building Playbook for mechanics)