Robotic Telescopes and Telescope Networks

1
Robotic Telescopes and Telescope Networks

• Iain Steele
• Liverpool Telescope
• http//telescope.livjm.ac.uk/

2
Robotic Telescope

• Autonomous in operation (no night time
  supervision)
• Operational Advantages
• Lower cost (fewer staff, no night work, less
  travel)
• Better data homogeneity (standardized observing
  and calibration sequences)
• Better reliability (less fiddling) once you
  have ironed the bugs out

3
Science Advantages

• Ease and speed of flexible scheduling
• Matching targets and instrument choice to
  conditions
• Monitoring observations become routine
• Fast Response to Targets of Opportunity

4
Important Lessons for Robotic Facilities

• User support still just as important as with a
  conventional telescope, dont underestimate the
  effort here!
• As much attention needs to be paid to data flow
  after the shutter closes as to taking the data in
  the first place
• You need to keep developing new instrumentation
  to keep competitive
• Devolve as much of the detail of the instrument
  to its own systems (standard command set,
  calibration details)
• Avoid common systems (but use common designs,
  command sets, interfaces)
• Pay attention to power conditioning!

5
How far can the robotic model be applied?

• Of course most satellite missions have always
  been robotic
• ARENA workshop in 2007 explored applicability to
  Antarctica, and found no show stoppers and many
  advantages.
• Applicability to 8m and larger telescopes?
• At some level almost there already (e.g. ESO,
  Gemini queue observing) in terms of user
  experience
• LSST survey-type observing an ideal application
• Does it leave us with a training/skills problem?

6
Telescope Networks

• Continuous monitoring
• High availability (RAIT)
• Homogenous?
• Planned
• Ease of operation maintenance
• Ease of data comparison
• Expensive to set up!
• Heterogeneous?
• Can grow organically
• Wider range of instrumentation / apertures
• Cheap to set up.
• Filter / calibration etc. problems
• Sociological problems

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Monitoring LMXBs with the Faulkes Telescopes
Fraser Lewis1, David M. Russell2, Rob P.
Fender2, Paul Roche1
We will always be able to keep you in the dark

• Contact flewis_at_lcogt.net, davidr_at_science.uva.nl

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Software standards for heterogeneous networks

• HTN protocol (making obersving requests)
• RTML as syntax
• Web Services as delivery mechanism
• VOEvent protocol (notifying others of
  interesting things)

http//www.telescope-networks.org/
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Once you have software interoperability standards

• You can have Intelligent Agents
• Software tools that act a proxy astronomer
• Uses the resources on the network (telescopes,
  databases, literature servers etc) to achieve a
  science goal
• Can react more quickly and 24 hours a day
  compared to a human astronomer
• Examples include the Robonet 2.0 / LCO
  microlensing planet search and GRB follow-up at
  UKIRT

10
Conclusions

• Robotic telescopes work, and can deliver routine
  monitoring and fast response to Targets of
  Opportunity
• Operating costs can be lower than conventional
  telescopes (but still need user support!)
• Software standards now exist to allow robotic
  telescopes to form ad-hoc networks tied together
  by Agents (http//www.estar.org.uk/)