Turning a remotely controllable observatory into a fully autonomous system

Scott Swindell; Chris Johnson; Paul Gabor; Grzegorz Zareba; Petr Kubánek; Michael Prouza

doi:10.1117/12.2062887

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7 August 2014 Turning a remotely controllable observatory into a fully autonomous system

Scott Swindell, Chris Johnson, Paul Gabor, Grzegorz Zareba, Petr Kubánek, Michael Prouza

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Proceedings Volume 9149, Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems V; 914921 (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2062887
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2014, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Abstract

We describe a complex process needed to turn an existing, old, operational observatory - The Steward Observatory’s 61” Kuiper Telescope - into a fully autonomous system, which observers without an observer. For this purpose, we employed RTS2,1 an open sourced, Linux based observatory control system, together with other open sourced programs and tools (GNU compilers, Python language for scripting, JQuery UI for Web user interface). This presentation provides a guide with time estimates needed for a newcomers to the field to handle such challenging tasks, as fully autonomous observatory operations.

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Scott Swindell, Chris Johnson, Paul Gabor, Grzegorz Zareba, Petr Kubánek, and Michael Prouza "Turning a remotely controllable observatory into a fully autonomous system", Proc. SPIE 9149, Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems V, 914921 (7 August 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2062887

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