Review Helper
A tool for visualizing time allocations for the Chandra Space Telescope
- Type
- Internal web tool
- Built at
- Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA
- Used by
- Organizers of Chandra's peer review
- Built with
- D3, JavaScript, PHP, databases
Every year, a committee meets to decide which scientific proposals get observing time on the Chandra Space Telescope. I built Review Helper so the meeting's organizers could see, at a glance, how the time was being allocated.
Proposals are reviewed in 13 science areas, each called a "panel." On each panel sit a dozen or so expert astronomers from around the world, who discuss the merits of each proposal and grade it. Every panel works within quotas, such as total time, difficulty constraints and joint time with other telescopes, and tries to fit as much good science as it can into its allotted time.
Review Helper demo
Three views
Review summary
Overall balances for every quota across the entire meeting. Clicking an allocation shows which panels are over or under it.
Panel details
Each vertical bar is one panel, holding all of its proposals in order of grade. The height of each proposal shows how much telescope time it asked for. Hovering over a proposal shows more information about it.
- Green: approved for time by the panel
- Grey: the panel thinks it should get time, but had run out of time to award
- Red: the panel decided it should not get time
Proposal details
After the meeting, proposals sometimes still change: an observation is no longer needed or feasible, the observer makes a reasonable request, or more time becomes available. This section lets organizers preview those edits to the database of observations before committing to them, and the panel chart updates to show the result.
"Reset Fields" goes back to the last saved values, and "Undo All Changes" goes back to the committee's original decisions.