Robonet‐1.0

Robonet‐1.0 is a prototype network of 2m robotic telescopes spread out around the world, consisting of three 2 metre telescopes. In this paper we present some of the science done with the network and how we use eSTAR and HTN technologies to perform observing programmes in an efficient manner. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Grid integration of robotic telescopes

Robotic telescopes and grid technology have made significant progress in recent years. Both innovations offer important advantages over conventional technologies, particularly in combination with one another. Here, we introduce robotic telescopes used by the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam as ideal instruments for building a robotic telescope network. We also discuss the grid architecture and protocols facilitating the network integration that is being developed by the German AstroGrid‐D project. Finally, we present three user interfaces employed for this purpose. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

The eSTAR network – agent architectures for astronomy

The eSTAR Project uses intelligent agent technologies to carry out resource discovery, submit observation requests and analyze the reduced data returned from a meta‐network of robotic telescopes. Linking ground based telescopes with astronomical satellites, and using the emerging field of intelligent agent architectures to provide crucial autonomous decision making in software, the project has succeeded in combining data archives and research class telescopes, along with distributed computing nodes, to build an ad‐hoc peer‐to‐peer heterogeneous network of resources. We present the current operations paradigm of the eSTAR network and describe the direction in which the project intends to develop over the next few years. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Time‐sensitive astronomy in non‐robotic telescopes

Protocols for dealing with time‐sensitive observations have traditionally focused on robotic telescope networks and other types of automated dedicated facilities, mostly in the optical domain. Using UKIRT and JCMT as examples, which are infrared and sub‐millimetre telescopes with a traditional PI‐dominated user base, we discuss how such facilities can join a heterogeneous telescope network to their mutual advantage. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Autonomous software: Myth or magic?

We discuss work by the eSTAR project which demonstrates a fully closed loop autonomous system for the follow up of possible micro‐lensing anomalies. Not only are the initial micro‐lensing detections followed up in real time, but ongoing events are prioritised and continually monitored, with the returned data being analysed automatically. If the “smart software” running the observing campaign detects a planet‐like anomaly, further follow‐up will be scheduled autonomously and other telescopes and telescope networks alerted to the possible planetary detection.We further discuss the implications of this, and how such projects can be used to build more general autonomous observing and control systems. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Space astronomy for the mid‐21st century: Robotically maintained space telescopes

The historical development of ground based astronomical telescopes leads us to expect that space‐based astronomical telescopes will need tobe operational for many decades. The exchange of scientific instruments in space will be a prerequisite for the long lasting scientific success of such missions. Operationally, the possibility to repair or replace key spacecraft components in space will be mandatory. We argue that these requirements can be fulfilled with robotic missions and see the development of the required engineering as the main challenge. Ground based operations, scientifically and technically, will require a low operational budget of the running costs. These can be achieved through enhanced autonomy of the spacecraft and mission independent concepts for the support of the software. This concept can be applied to areas where the mirror capabilities do not constrain the lifetime of the mission (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Spectra of faint sources in crowded fields with FRODOSpec on the Liverpool Robotic Telescope

We check the performance of the FRODOSpec integral‐field spectrograph for observations of faint sources in crowded fields. Although the standard processing pipeline L2 yields too noisy fibre spectra, we present a new processing software (L2LENS) that gives rise to accurate spectra for the two images of the gravitationally lensed quasar Q0957+561. Among other things, this L2LENS reduction tool accounts for the presence of cosmic‐ray events, scattered‐light backgrounds, blended sources, and chromatic source displacements due to differential atmospheric refraction. Our non‐standard reduction of Q0957+561 data shows the ability of FRODOSpec to provide useful information on a wide variety of targets, and thus, the big potential of integral‐field spectrographs on current and future robotic telescopes. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Scheduling for Robonet‐1 homogenous telescope network

The Robonet‐1 homogenous telescope network consists of 3 fully robotic 2 m class telescopes. I describe how the observation requests submitted by external users and automated user agents are selected for observation by the individual telescope schedulers. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

System aspects of the EUDOXOS observatories network

The networking architecture of the EUDOXOS' robotic telescopes is presented. We have studied adopted and tested various software & hardware approaches for developing an observational facility equipped with the very high availability needed to achieve continuous operation, inherent capacity for effective multiuser support, fully robotic unattended operation, fast response to targets of opportunity and accommodation of tele‐operating instruments. Critical practical aspects and considerations of our operating implementation as well as the main points of an ongoing upgrade initiative expected to be of general interest, are discussed. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

An RTML transport implementation on the Liverpool Telescope

The Liverpool Telescope is a 2.0m fully robotic telescope based on the Canary island of LaPalma. In this paper I describe the Java(TM) implementation of a method to transport RTML (Remote Telescope Markup Language) between a Node Agent (Web Services endpoint) embedded at the telescope and a remote Agent. The advantages and disadvantages of the method are discussed, along with the suitability of the protocol for HTN standardisation. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Heterogenous telescope networks: An introduction

The first Heterogenous Telescopes Network (HTN) conference was held in July 2005. It aimed to bring together software developers, observatory staff and science users with the objective of defining the how and why of developing new ways of doing astronomical observing using geographically distributed and differently instrumented and operated telescopes. The papers included in this volume arise from that conference. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Phasing segmented mirrors using defocused images at visible wavelengths

Plans for future optical telescopes of diameter more than 10 m are based on segmented mirrors, made up of hundreds or even thousands of segments. A challenge for these telescopes is the alignment in piston (cophasing) where phase differences between individual segments have to be reduced to a small fraction of the observing wavelength in order to avoid degradation of image quality.
Based on the phase discontinuity sensing method used at the Keck telescopes to measure small piston errors using infrared wavelengths, we develop a new method that allows fast high-precision measurements of large piston errors even at visible wavelengths.     

RTS2: Lessons learned from a widely distributed telescope network

RTS2 (Remote Telescope System 2) is a highly modular open source telescope and observatory management software package. It evolved from RTS, which was developed in Python to control a telescope aimed at observing optical transients of γ ray burts. The development of a network system capable of operating robotic telescopes is both difficult and complicated. Along with continued software development one must be concerned with maintaining operations and obtaining results. This is a review of experiences gained building a network of robotic telescopes. It focuses on describing which issues are important during development of the robotic observatory software and requirements for future development of the RTS2 package. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

An autonomous adaptive scheduling agent for period searching

We describe the design and implementation of an autonomous adaptive software agent that addresses the practical problem of observing undersampled, periodic, time‐varying phenomena using a network of HTN‐compliant robotic telescopes. The algorithm governing the behaviour of the agent uses an optimal geometric sampling technique to cover the period range of interest, but additionally implements proactive behaviour that maximises the optimality of the dataset in the face of an uncertain and changing operating environment. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Astronomical network event and observation notification

Networks are becoming a key element in most current and all future, telescope and observatory projects. The ability to easily and efficiently pass observation data, alert data and instrumentation requests between distributed systems could enable science as never before. However, any effective large scale or meta‐network of astronomical resources will require a common communication format or development resources will have to be continuously dedicated to creating interpreters. The necessary elements of any astronomy communication can be easily identified, efficiently described and rigidly formatted so that both robotic and human operations can use the same data. In this paper we will explore the current state of notification, what notification requirements are essential to create a successful standard and present a standard now under development by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA), called the VOEvent. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Pointing and tracking analysis of alt‐azimuthal multi‐focus telescopes: the THEMIS case

We discuss the pointing and tracking configuration of THEMIS which may be considered as representative of those alt‐azimuthal telescopes with an optical configuration with multiple focal planes, not all locked to both the alt‐azimuthal coordinates. In the THEMIS case two focal planes are present. The primary focus F1 is locked to the alt‐azimuthal mount, while the secondary focus F2 (which is used by the instruments), is only locked to the azimuth angle. The different contributions to the final accuracy of both absolute pointing and tracking as observed at F2 are defined, and an extimation of the contribution of each component of the whole chain which affects the field position at F2 (software, mechanical and optical) is given. The experimental data are the result of a test campaign carried on at THEMIS in February and March 2002. We can say that (a) for all the used observing configurations, the tracking accuracy is coherent at any point along the trajectory with the correspondent absolute pointing accuracy, which is an indication for the quality of the telescope dynamical performances (b) the main contribution to the residual field shift which is observed at F2 arises from the opto‐mechanical alignment configuration of the optics between F1 and F2, which therefore is the crucial point for such multi‐focus configuration. More informations can be found at the official THEMIS website (http://www.themis.iac.es).     

STELLA and RoboTel – a prototype for a robotic network?

Robotic telescopes are more and more commonly used in today's astronomical research. In fact, several facilities are spread around the globe, already forming a loose net. A big leap forward would lie in the capabilities to share observations between different telescopes. One gains immediately weather independence and the possibility of continuous observations from a working network. In this paper, the three robotic telescope operated under the hood of the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam are introduced, the potential of a robotic telescope network are sketched out and principle hints on accomplishing such a network are outlined. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Size matters

The new generation of ground‐based, large‐aperture solar telescopes promises to significantly increase our capabilities to understand the many basic phenomena taking place in the Sun at all atmospheric layers and how they relate to each other. A (non‐exhaustive) summary of the main scientific arguments to pursue these impressive technological goals is presented. We illustrate how imaging, polarimetry, and spectroscopy can benefit from the new telescopes and how several wavelength bands should be observed to study the atmospheric coupling from the upper convection zone all the way to the corona. The particular science case of sunspot penumbrae is barely discussed as a specific example (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Architectures for science: Intelligent agent technology

I review the current architecture of the HTN and make three suggestions for the future. (i) We should retain the expertise split between agents which deal with the science programmes and those which deal with telescope constraints. This makes it easy to add new programmes or new telescopes. (ii) We should develop “look ahead” schedulers which attempt to schedule a whole night at once. This will give reliable calculations for the chance an observation will be carried out, and give a better chance that high priority time critical observations are successfully scheduled. (iii)We should strive to attract more science programmes to the HTN, in particular time critical observations spread over many nights, and non‐time critical work which can benefit from access to databases and the literature. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)