16,772 research outputs found
Robotic Telescopes and Networks: New Tools for Education and Science
Nowadays many telescopes around the world are automated and some networks of
robotic telescopes are active or planned as shown by the lists we draw up. Such
equipment could be used for the training of students and for science in the
Universities of Developing Countries and of New Astronomical Countries, by
sending them observational data via Internet or through remotely controlled
telescopes. It seems that it is time to open up for discussion with UN and ESA
organizations and also with IAU, how to implement links between robotic
telescopes and such Universities applying for collaborations. Many scientific
fields could thus be accessible to them, for example on stellar variability,
near-earth object follow-up, gamma-ray burst counterpart tracking, and so on.Comment: 18 pages, review presented at Eight UN/ESA Workshop on Basic Space
Science: Scientific Exploration from Space, held in Mafraq (Jordan), 13-17
March 1999, to be published in Astrophys. and Space Sc. (Kluwer
LCOGT Network Observatory Operations
We describe the operational capabilities of the Las Cumbres Observatory
Global Telescope Network. We summarize our hardware and software for
maintaining and monitoring network health. We focus on methodologies to utilize
the automated system to monitor availability of sites, instruments and
telescopes, to monitor performance, permit automatic recovery, and provide
automatic error reporting. The same jTCS control system is used on telescopes
of apertures 0.4m, 0.8m, 1m and 2m, and for multiple instruments on each. We
describe our network operational model, including workloads, and illustrate our
current tools, and operational performance indicators, including telemetry and
metrics reporting from on-site reductions. The system was conceived and
designed to establish effective, reliable autonomous operations, with automatic
monitoring and recovery - minimizing human intervention while maintaining
quality. We illustrate how far we have been able to achieve that.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure
Real-Time Detection of Optical Transients with RAPTOR
Fast variability of optical objects is an interesting though poorly explored
subject in modern astronomy. Real-time data processing and identification of
transient celestial events in the images is very important for such study as it
allows rapid follow-up with more sensitive instruments. We discuss an approach
which we have developed for the RAPTOR project, a pioneering closed-loop system
combining real-time transient detection with rapid follow-up. RAPTOR's data
processing pipeline is able to identify and localize an optical transient
within seconds after the observation. The testing we performed so far have been
confirming the effectiveness of our method for the optical transient detection.
The software pipeline we have developed for RAPTOR can easily be applied to the
data from other experiments.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, to appear in SPIE proceedings vol. 484
The Centurion 18 telescope of the Wise Observatory
We describe the second telescope of the Wise Observatory, a 0.46-m Centurion
18 (C18) installed in 2005, which enhances significantly the observing
possibilities. The telescope operates from a small dome and is equipped with a
large-format CCD camera. In the last two years this telescope was intensively
used in a variety of monitoring projects.
The operation of the C18 is now automatic, requiring only start-up at the
beginning of a night and close-down at dawn. The observations are mostly
performed remotely from the Tel Aviv campus or even from the observer's home.
The entire facility was erected for a component cost of about 70k$ and a labor
investment of a total of one man-year.
We describe three types of projects undertaken with this new facility: the
measurement of asteroid light variability with the purpose of determining
physical parameters and binarity, the following-up of transiting extrasolar
planets, and the study of AGN variability. The successful implementation of the
C18 demonstrates the viability of small telescopes in an age of huge
light-collectors, provided the operation of such facilities is very efficient.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, some figures quality was degraded, accepted for
publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc
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