I sure wish there was a way to make it simpler to set up spaced sequential images in a plan. As it is if I want to make a series of spaced images of a given star in a night, I have to set up an observations and an image set for each iteration desired, all from scratch – down to the coordinates. As one might well want to do six, eight even more iterations, this get tedious in a hurry. Without understanding the complications involved, I could see several ways to improve this process:

1. Since observations can be repeated in a plan, why not allow entry of the delay feature at that level? That is where I would expect to find it actually and even knowing that the feature existed, it took me a while to find it, as it only shows up if you enter a second observation. I just knew that you could select repeat and then specify the time delay.

2. Barring that, how about a new observation under a plan coming filled out as a copy of the prior existing observation. I can anticipate the retort that if a new observation is just a duplicate of a prior observation you should use the repeat feature in the first observation. But that takes me back to “1.” as the only circumstance in which I can image someone wanting to space observation in a plan would involve duplicate observations. Regardless on that point, it would seem that 90%+ of new observations would be largely if not entirely duplicative of a prior observation, especially if that is the only way to do spaced sequences, and there is really no down side to prefilling new observations and their image sets with prior plan information in any event as it is no harder to make a change than make a new entry.

3. Failing any of those ideas being suitable, how about altering the Photometry Request Form (which will always address a single target) to provide spaced sequential images inside a plan.