2,085 research outputs found
Three years of experience with the STELLA robotic observatory
Since May 2006, the two STELLA robotic telescopes at the Izana observatory in
Tenerife, Spain, delivered an almost uninterrupted stream of scientific data.
To achieve such a high level of autonomous operation, the replacement of all
troubleshooting skills of a regular observer in software was required. Care
must be taken on error handling issues and on robustness of the algorithms
used. In the current paper, we summarize the approaches we followed in the
STELLA observatory
Training telescope operators and support astronomers at Paranal
The operations model of the Paranal Observatory relies on the work of
efficient staff to carry out all the daytime and nighttime tasks. This is
highly dependent on adequate training. The Paranal Science Operations
department (PSO) has a training group that devises a well-defined and
continuously evolving training plan for new staff, in addition to broadening
and reinforcing courses for the whole department. This paper presents the
training activities for and by PSO, including recent astronomical and quality
control training for operators, as well as adaptive optics and interferometry
training of all staff. We also present some future plans.Comment: Paper 9910-123 presented at SPIE 201
The 4MOST facility simulator: instrument and science optimisation
This paper describes the design and implementation of a facility simulator
for the 4 metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) project, a new
survey instrument proposed for the ESO VISTA telescope. The 4MOST Facility
Simulator (4FS) has several roles, firstly to optimise the design of the
instrument, secondly to devise a survey strategy for the wide field design
reference surveys that are proposed for 4MOST, and thirdly to verify that
4MOST, as designed, can indeed achieve its primary science goals. We describe
the overall structure of the 4FS, together with details of some important 4FS
subsystems. We present the initial results from the 4FS which illustrate
clearly the value of having a functioning facility simulator very early in the
conceptual design phase of this large project.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl
Three years of experience with the STELLA robotic observatory
Since May 2006, the two STELLA robotic telescopes at the Izaa observatory in Tenerife, Spain, delivered an almost uninterrupted stream of scientific data. To achieve such a high level of autonomous operation, the replacement of all troubleshooting skills of a regular observer in software was required. Care must be taken on error handling issues and on robustness of the algorithms used. In the current paper, we summarize the approaches we followed in the STELLA observatory. Copyright © 2010 Thomas Granzer et al
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
Developing eThread pipeline using SAGA-pilot abstraction for large-scale structural bioinformatics
While most of computational annotation approaches are sequence-based, threading methods are becoming increasingly attractive because of predicted structural information that could uncover the underlying function. However, threading tools are generally compute-intensive and the number of protein sequences from even small genomes such as prokaryotes is large typically containing many thousands, prohibiting their application as a genome-wide structural systems biology tool. To leverage its utility, we have developed a pipeline for eThread - a meta-threading protein structure modeling tool, that can use computational resources efficiently and effectively. We employ a pilot-based approach that supports seamless data and task-level parallelism and manages large variation in workload and computational requirements. Our scalable pipeline is deployed on Amazon EC2 and can efficiently select resources based upon task requirements. We present runtime analysis to characterize computational complexity of eThread and EC2 infrastructure. Based on results, we suggest a pathway to an optimized solution with respect to metrics such as time-to-solution or cost-to-solution. Our eThread pipeline can scale to support a large number of sequences and is expected to be a viable solution for genome-scale structural bioinformatics and structure-based annotation, particularly, amenable for small genomes such as prokaryotes. The developed pipeline is easily extensible to other types of distributed cyberinfrastructure. © 2014 Anjani Ragothaman et al
Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE): Implementing systems engineering methodology for the development of a new facility
Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer will be a 10-m class highly multiplexed
survey telescope, including a segmented primary mirror and robotic fiber
positioners at the prime focus. MSE will replace the Canada France Hawaii
Telescope (CFHT) on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The multiplexing includes
an array of over four thousand fibres feeding banks of spectrographs several
tens of meters away. We present an overview of the requirements flow-down for
MSE, from Science Requirements Document to Observatory Requirements Document.
We have developed the system performance budgets, along with updating the
budget architecture of our evolving project. We have also identified the links
between subsystems and system budgets (and subsequently science requirements)
and included system budget that are unique to MSE as a fiber-fed facility. All
of this has led to a set of Observatory Requirements that is fully consistent
with the Science Requirements.Comment: 20 pages; Proceedings of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes +
Instrumentation 2018; Modeling, Systems Engineering, and Project Management
for Astronomy VII
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