Hooking up a meta-network with VOEvent

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Hooking up a meta-network with VOEvent

• Robert White
• Stuart Evans
• W. Thomas Vestrand
• James Wren
• Przemyk Wozniak
• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Alasdair Allan
• University of Exeter, eSTAR Project

2nd VOEvent Workshop Tucson 2005
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TALONS Developments(Telescope Alert Operations
Network System)
Original Mandate To support the RAPTOR
stereoscopic wide-field optical transient search.

• System Highlights
• Server / Client based bi-directional network
• Supports unlimited clients and outside network
  connections
• Uses Distributed Sensor Network (DSN)
  architecture

• Additions
• VOEvent format transmissions
• eStar network Interface
• VOEvent client receiver
• New monitor interface

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Current TALONS Clients

• RAPTOR A B
• System separated by 38km baseline
• Wide Field mosaic system, each 4x 85mm
• Narrow field fovea, each 1x 400mm
• RAPTOR P
• 4x 400mm mosaic
• RAPTOR S
• 0.4m OTA (3 interchangeable detectors)
• Back illuminated 1k x 1k CCD
• Photon counting imager
• Grating spectrometer
• RAPTOR T (system testing)
• 4x 0.4m co-aligned OTAs
• Different filters (B, V, R, I) on each camera
• RAPTOR 16 (under construction)
• 16x 200mm mosaic
• Possible additions (soon to come?)

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The Thinking Telescopes (T3) Project
Evolving Database (SkyDOT NVO)
Cerebro / TALONS
Machine Learning
www.thinkingtelescopes.lanl.gov
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Whats Most Important to Us (RAPTOR and T3
Project) in Event Notification?
Two words
Efficiency and
SPEED
Some of the most ground-breaking science could be
lurking in the first few seconds!
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Action Items from VOEvent Workshop I

• Create VOEvents from RAPTOR alerts
• RAPTOR internal alerts are being generated as
  VOEvent and stored.
• Bonus GCN Alerts are now being translated to
  VOEvent, re-transmitted, and stored.
• Integrate TALONS network with another network
  using VOEvent as the communication format
• TALONS eSTAR gateway developed and operational.

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eSTAR TALONS Heterogeneous Telescope Network
Communication Flow - Observations
Broadcast to to all eSTAR nodes
eSTAR Agent
1.
TALONS Clients
phase0 request (RTML)
TALONS Central
returned by all nodes
eSTAR Agent
2.
Telescope System Configurations (RTML)
TALONS Clients
TALONS Central
Best possible instruments determined
eSTAR Agent
3.
Score Observation (RTML)
TALONS Clients
Could be broadcast to more than one node
TALONS Central
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eSTAR TALONS Heterogeneous Telescope Network
Communication Flow - Observations (Cont.)
eSTAR Agent
4.
Return Observation Score (RTML)
TALONS Clients
TALONS Central
eSTAR Agent
5.
Request Observation (RTML)
TALONS Clients
TALONS Central
eSTAR Agent
6.
Observation Complete (RTML)
TALONS Clients
TALONS Central
Database
Observation Report (VOEvent)
General Broadcast
Observation Data
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eSTAR TALONS Heterogeneous Telescope Network
Communication Flow - Alert
Outside Networks (i.e. GCN)
eSTAR Agent
1.
Alert Issued (VOEvent)
TALONS Central
TALONS Clients
VOEvent Clients
eSTAR Database (VOEvent)
RSS Feed (VOEvent)
Local Database (VOEvent)
eSTAR Agent
2.
Acknowledge (VOEvent)
TALONS Clients
TALONS Central
NOTE Works regardless of alert originator (e.g.
If eSTAR issues the alert TALONS acknowledges
with the database alert information.)
Contains senders storage location for data and
data file name
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Systems Still Being Developed

• Web interface (via Thinking Telescopes web site)
  for creating manual VOEvents
• SkyDOT database translation from / to VOEvent
• Analysis / Decision tool for full integration of
  SkyDOT and other databases.
• Secure data transfer (other than direct connect)
• Self spawning server (redundancy to system)
• Additional versions to support OSX clients
• Integrated aggregator

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Issues Still Pending

• Transmission security
• Finalize the format
• Efficiency vs. complexity
• Product support
• Sociology

For More Information on These Projects
see www.thinkingtelescopes.lanl.gov www.raptor.
lanl.gov