We report here on the ongoing EU FP7 Project GLORIA with emphasis on possibility of investigation
of cataclysmic variables by users. GLORIA stands for GLObal Robotic-telescopes
Intelligent Array. GLORIA enables the first free and open-access network of robotic telescopes
in the world. It represents a Web 2.0 environment where users can do research in astronomy by
observing with robotic telescopes, and/or by analyzing data that other users have acquired with
GLORIA, or from other free access databases like the European Virtual Observatory

Hudec R.

English

Digital Library of the Czech Technical University in Prague

PoS(FRAPWS2014)035GLObal Robotic telescopes Intelligent Array fore-ScienceRené Hudec1,2∗†1Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering,Technicka 2, CZ 160 00 Prague, Czech Republic2Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech RepublicFricova 298 - CZ 251 65 Ondrejov, Czech RepublicE-mail: rene.hudec@gmail.comWe report here on the ongoing EU FP7 Project GLORIA with emphasis on possibility of in-vestigation of cataclysmic variables by users. GLORIA stands for GLObal Robotic-telescopesIntelligent Array. GLORIA enables the first free and open-access network of robotic telescopesin the world. It represents a Web 2.0 environment where users can do research in astronomy byobserving with robotic telescopes, and/or by analyzing data that other users have acquired withGLORIA, or from other free access databases like the European Virtual Observatory.Frontier Research in Astrophysics,26-31 May 2014Mondello (Palermo), Italy∗Speaker.†On behalf of large GLORIA project international consortium.c© Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). http://pos.sissa.it/PoS(FRAPWS2014)035GLORIA René Hudec1,21. IntroductionThe research in astronomy poses two main challenges, namely 1) the immensity of the sky and2) the huge amount of astronomical data being gathered. In fact, astronomers are nowadays facinggreat difficulty in finding the resources to analyze the increasing flood that modern astronomyinstruments generate insufficient computing power, insufficiently powerful software tools, and notenough hours in the day. The sky comprises 40 000 square degrees (144 million square minutes).The future professional projects (like LSST) intend to observe a very significant fraction of iton a regular basis. In order to meet the above-mentioned challenges, an increasing number ofastronomical projects have begun to try to foster citizen participation to help analyze data by usingcollaborative Internet application (the so-called Web 2.0).GLORIA stands for “GLObal Robotic-telescopes Intelligent Array". GLORIA represents thefirst free and open-access network of robotic telescopes in the world. It represents a Web 2.0environment where users can do research in astronomy by observing with robotic telescopes, and/orby analyzing data that other users have acquired with GLORIA, or from other free access databaseslike the European Virtual Observatory (http://www.euro-vo.org).The GLORIA project represents the first attempt to create a network of about 20 robotic tele-scopes for public access, education, science and much much more. The GLORIA Network has 17network telescopes now. Few others are expected to join us soon.Many Internet communities have already formed to speed-up scientific research, to collaboratein documenting something, or for social projects. Research in astronomy can benefit from attractingmany eyes to the sky – to detect something in the sky requires looking at the right place at the righttime. Our robotic telescopes can search the sky, but the vast quantities of data they produce are fargreater than astronomers have time to analyze. GLORIA will provide a way of putting thousandseyes and minds on an astronomy problem. GLORIA is intended to be a Web 2.0 structure, withthe possibility of doing real experiments. The community will not only generate content, as inmost Web 2.0, but it will control telescopes around the world, both directly and via scheduledobservations. The community will take decisions for the network and it will give "intelligence"to GLORIA, while the drudge work (such as drawing up telescope schedules that satisfy variousconstraints) will be done by algorithms that will be developed for the purpose.GLORIA project defines free standards, protocols and methodology for the following pur-poses: controlling Robotic Telescopes and all related instrumentation (i.e. cameras, filter-wheels,domes...); giving Web access to the Network: access to an arbitrary number of robotic telescopesvia a web portal; conducting On-line experiments (it will be possible to design specific web envi-ronments for controlling telescopes for research on a specific scientific issue; conducting Off-lineexperiments (it is possible to design specific web environments for analyzing astronomical meta-data produced by GLORIA or other databases).The main part of GLORIA is represented by providing access to robotic telescopes, Onlineexperiments (observations), Offline experiments (research on acquired images), Live broadcasting,Social network + community, and Support.2PoS(FRAPWS2014)035GLORIA René Hudec1,22. Objectives and Benefits of GLORIA ProjectThe world-wide network of robotic telescopes (GLORIA) does not intend to compete withLSST, but our underlying idea is that “the more eyes we put on the sky, the more and greater thescientific discoveries will be achieved". Thus, in order to try to improve the way we are doingastronomy research, this project aims to build the first open access world wide network of robotictelescopes to serve citizens from around the world for free, but competing for observing time.Hence GLORIA is indeed an “Intelligent Array" and it bases its intelligence in its communityof users (Sanchez Moreno et al. 2013). Like most Web 2.0 projects, GLORIA implements areputation-based scoring system to reward user contributions, driven by parameters such as thequality of the gathered and processed images, number of hours invested in the observations etc., aswell as the votes granted by the rest of the community that finally evaluate the quality of the workdone. At the end of month 24 (October 2013) the consortium produced a standard for adding newtelescopes and experiments to this network. Unlike other private, profitable ongoing initiatives, theGLORIA network provides a free, twofold service to the community:• Giving citizens (including professional and amateur astronomers) free access to a network of17 robotic telescopes spread into 4 continents and both hemispheres. In the case of profes-sional astronomers, preferences will be given to those of developing countries who will lackastronomical facilities in their own nations.• Giving citizens an easy web access to all the data collected by the robotic telescopes.Beside giving service to research, in order to manage GLORIA main objective of fostering astro-nomical research, by allowing near continuous observations of a given target thanks to its world-wide network facilities, the following additional tangible outcomes are pursued:1. GLORIA enables more telescopes to join, producing methodology, standards, software, anddocumentation oriented to teach professional and amateurs astronomers to robotize their telescopesand to integrate them into the GLORIA network.2. GLORIA enables more research goals to be pursued, producing methodology, standards, soft-ware, and documentation oriented to teach amateurs and professional astronomers to design newweb experiments and to integrate them into the GLORIA network.3. GLORIA encourages participation in order to increase in number its community of citizenscientists. Newcomers are very welcomed.4. GLORIA gives free access to knowledge to everybody. All knowledge (software, manual,standards, documents, astronomical images, data, etc) produced by the GLORIA consortium andby the community will have copyleft licenses.5. GLORIA intends to continue in the future. Since the maintenance of the distributed telescopesis paid by their owners, the cost of the core part is very cheap. The consortium believes that aneconomic model based in public and private subventions and donations is very possible for a projectlike this to go on beyond 2014.2.1 Impact of the projectThe GLORIA partners really believe in the enormous power of astronomy as a center of in-terest in scientific and human training of our young people. The children of today will be the3PoS(FRAPWS2014)035GLORIA René Hudec1,2astronomers of tomorrow. In order to enroll newcomers and awaken interest in astronomy amongchildren, during 2012-14 we have organized the live Internet broadcast of 5 astronomical events:4 eclipses and a transit of Venus, which was made from the GLORIA network, with associatedactivities in all schools of the partners countries, with the aim of getting students and teachers par-ticipating in research–based science education and improving their motivation to push the barriersof science education further.Figure 1: The GLORIA project participants2.2 The GLORIA ConsortiumGLORIA brings together a critical mass of scientific and technological leaders with exten-sible expertise in TIC and Astronomical research, dissemination and developed of technologicalprojects. The GLORIA consortium includes these institutions: UPM–Technical University ofMadrid Computer Science Faculty–Spain (project coordination); AUAV–Astronomical Institute,Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; CSIC–Spanish Research Council–Spain (scientificcoordination); CVTU–Czech Technical University–Czech Republic, IP-ASCR–Institute of Physicsof the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; IAC–Astrophysic Institute of Canarias–ElTeide Observatory–Spain; INAF–Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica–Italy; SAO–Special Astrophysi-cal Observatory–Russia; UCDNUID–University College Dublin–Ireland; UC–University of Chile–Chile; UMA–University of Málaga–Spain; UOXF–Oxford University–U.K.; UNIWARSAW–Universityof Warsaw–Poland.3. GLORIA Project and AstrophysicsApart from use in citizen science and education, the GLORIA network of robotic telescopescan be used by professional and amateur astronomers to conduct astrophysical research as well.4PoS(FRAPWS2014)035GLORIA René Hudec1,2Figure 2: The distribution of the GLORIA project telescopesThe range of use is very wide, below we give just a very few examples.The CV in Pegasus (found in eruption in May 8, 2010) can serve as an excellent example of abright object which can be easily detected by amateurs and small cameras and/or telescopes. Thisobject represented a rare type of dwarf nova with very long recurrence time (67 years) but withvery large amplitudes (Hudec 2010). We note that the second flare of this CV in 1942 was foundusing astronomical photographic archives which are perfectly suitable for this kind of work, i.e.searches for past historical flare events (Hudec 1999 and 2007, Hudec et al. 2012). Only very fewsuch objects are known because they can easily escape detection.In this regard, we also note that the sky contains many yet unknown transients of variouskinds. They are identified and attract attention only when they show themselves in their outbursts.The follow-up observations then can lead to the study of their type. One such object detectedby a very small telescope is the Liška Flare Star. It is an example of the astronomical discov-ery of a very rare event with a small amateur telescope (Liška et al. 2014). We suggest that thisobject is a new flare dMe star of UV Ceti type based on its color, X-ray emission, and the prop-erties of the optical light curve of the flare, identical with the X-ray sources RX J1118.3+1347and 2E 1115.8+1403. In SIMBAD, these 2 sources are given as different sources but this is prob-ably wrong and it is only one source. The object may be similar to the EXOSAT X-ray sourceEXO 020528+1454.8 = G 035–027 with a dMe flare star counterpart detected by Hudec et al.(1988).The investigation of selected cataclysmic variables cas serve as another example (Hudec andSimon, 2015).The observations and research of CVs are expected to be supervised by GLORIAscientists. Everybody can join us at http://gloria-project.eu, and this involves both citizen scienceand students, as well as professional astronomers. Typically 20 percent of Robotic Telescopes5PoS(FRAPWS2014)035GLORIA René Hudec1,2(RTs) observing time is expected to be used for GLORIA users, but some telescopes such as BARTwill provide up to 40 percent.The analysis with GLORIA telescopes can be effectively supplemented by long–term photom-etry provided by extended astronomical photographic plate archives. Both databases can providedata for complex analysis of long-term evolution of various astrophysical objects.Acknowledgments The scientific part of the study (astrophysical aspects) is linked to the theGA CR grant 13-39464J.References[1] Hudec, R., 2010, The Astronomer’s Telegram, No. 2619[2] Hudec, R., et al., 1988, Astronomical Institutes of Czechoslovakia, Bulletin (ISSN 0004-6248), vol.39, no. 5, p. 296-302[3] Hudec, R., et al., 2012, Acta Polytechnica, IBWS2011 Proceedings, 1(52)[4] Hudec, R., 2007, in Exploring the Cosmic Frontier: Astrophysical Instruments for the 21st Century.ESO Astrophysics Symposia, ISBN 978-3-540-39755-7. Germany, p.79[5] Hudec, R., 1999, An introduction to the world’s large plate archives, Acta Historica Astronomiae,vol.6, 28[6] Liška, J., et al., 2015, in preparation.[7] Sanchez Moreno, F. M., et al., 2013, GLORIA documentation package.[8] Hudec R. and Simon V., Acta Polytechnica Proc. Series, Vol 2, No 1 (2015): THE GOLDEN AGE OFCATACLYSMIC VARIABLES AND RELATED OBJECTS - II.6

GLObal Robotic telescopes Intelligent Array for e-Science

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GLObal Robotic telescopes Intelligent Array for e-Science

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