The ESO astronomical site monitor upgrade

2000

As major observatories are planning automatic and optimized scheduling of large astronomical facilities, reliable and accurate monitoring of observing conditions is a prerequisite. For this purpose, the concept of Astronomical Site Monitor (ASM) has been developed for the VLT as an integrated subsystem of the observatory. The ASM runs in automated mode and provides the control software of the VLT unit telescopes with measured environmental data, including outside seeing and meteorological parameters. The VLT common software and standardized hardware components have been adopted throughout the system. The ASM is therefore a good example for the portability of the VLT standard components, leading to increased reliability and easier maintenance. Two almost identical ASM systems are now in operation at the Paranal and La Silla observatories. The system attributes, results, and future extensions will be described.

Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems III, 2010

In 2007 ESO Council endorsed a concept to maintain the La Silla Site within the context of a streamlined operational and support scenario. La Silla remains part of the La Silla Paranal Observatory Division, and supports science projects of the ESO community using the 2.2m, NTT and 3.6m telescope. Infrastructure to host externally funded projects at national telescopes is provided. A detailed Site Operations Plan for La Silla 2010+ had been developed, and is been implemented since October 2009. We describe its implications on staffing, infrastructure, and science operations. We report our first experience gathered under this new operations paradigm.

Modeling, Systems Engineering, and Project Management for Astronomy VI, 2016

DAG (Eastern Anatolian Observatory in Turkish), will be built in one of the well-known mountain ridges of Erzurum, Turkey, at latitude of 39 o 46'50, longitude of 41 o 13'35 and an altitude of 3170 meters. As well as erecting the largest telescope of Turkey, the DAG project aims to establish an observatory complex both small in size and functional enough to give service to all astronomy community. In this paper, the challenge is explained in details: geological and geographical limitations, environmental and meteorological constraints, engineering and structural considerations, energy efficiency and sustainability.

Earth Science Informatics, 2008

Virtual observatories are being established in a wide range a disciplines, supported by a variety of agencies. Groups such as the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA), Planetary Data System (PDS) and the Space Physics Archive Search and Extract (SPASE) consortium are defining metadata standards to aid in archiving and sharing of information resources. The role of the virtual observatories in this resource sharing environment is to locate available resources and help users find the resources they need and then gain access to those resources. There are many different existing resource providers from which virtual observatories must collect descriptions of their resources. These resource providers may have associations with other providers so the topology of information exchange can be complicated. We explore the variety of topologies that can exist and discuss methods of collecting (harvesting) information from providers such as scheduled and on-demand harvesting. We compare the benefits of each approach and look at the issues of management overhead, adaptability and timeliness. We also explore the benefits of combining searching and harvesting services as part of a comprehensive solution.

Proceedings of SPIE, 2004

The Japanese Virtual Observatory (JVO) project has been conducted by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). JVO aims at providing easy access to federated astronomical databases (especially SUBARU, Nobeyama and ALMA) and data analysis environment using the Grid technology. We defined JVOQL (JVO Query Language) for efficient retrieval of astronomical data from a federated database. We then constructed the first version of the JVO prototype in order to study technical feasibility including functionality of JVOQL, remote operations using Globus toolkit. The prototype consists of several components as follows: JVO portal to accept users' requests described in JVOQL, JVO Controller to parse them into individual query requests, and distributed database servers containing Suprime-Cam data of the Subaru telescope and 2MASS data. We confirmed that this prototype actually worked to access to a federated database. We construct the second version of the JVO prototype system to improve usability, which includes new user interfaces, efficient remote operations, and introduction of analysis tools. In the course of this, Grid service and XML database is employed. In this presentation we describe its design and structure of the new JVO prototype system.

2005

We describe the architecture of the Japanese Virtual Observatory (JVO) prototype system version 2. JVO aims at seamless access to astronomical data archives stored in distributed data servers as well as data analysis environment. For this purpose, it is important to establish a framework for access to remote servers, including remote procedure calls (RPCs) and data transfer. A data request for distributed database is described in the JVO Query Language. The JVO system parses the query language and decomposes it into individual remote procedures, such as the retrieval of catalog images and spectra, cross matching, and workflow generation. Based on this workflow, remote procedures are called. For RPCs of JVO prototype system 1, we employed Globus toolkit 2 (GT2). However, latency time of GT2 RPCs was too long for successive shorttime jobs. Therefore, we employed Globus toolkit 3 (GT3) for JVO prototype system 2. As a result, we find that Grid Service in GT3 improves performance of RPC...

Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems, 2006

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) operates its Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal (Chile) with to date 11 scientific instruments including two interferometric instruments and their numerous auxiliary systems at 4 Unit Telescopes (UTs) and 3 Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs). The rigorous application of preventive and corrective maintenance procedures and a close monitoring of the instruments' engineering data streams are the key ingredient towards the minimization of the technical downtime of the instruments. The extensive use of standardized hardware and software components and their strict configuration control is considered crucial to efficiently manage the large number of systems with the limited human and technical resources available. A close collaboration between the instrument engineers, the instrument scientists in instrument operation teams (IOTs) turns out to be vital to maintain and to the performance of the instrumentation suite. In this paper, the necessary tools, workflows, and organizational structures to achieve these objectives are presented.

Romanian Astronomical Journal

We review the development of an astronomical observatory mainly from the architectural standpoint and less via astronomical knowledge or instruments evolution. Our approach is an attempt to summarize the evolution of the buildings from the stage of instruments to the complex modern stage with many functions and even with their cultural role.

Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems IX

The Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (OAJ †1 ) in Spain is a young astronomical facility, conceived and developed from the beginning as a fully automated observatory with the main goal of optimizing the processes in the scientific and general operation of the Observatory. The OAJ has been particularly conceived for carrying out large sky surveys with two unprecedented telescopes of unusually large fields of view (FoV): the JST/T250, a 2.55m telescope of 3deg field of view, and the JAST/T80, an 83cm telescope of 2deg field of view. The most immediate objective of the two telescopes for the next years is carrying out two unique photometric surveys of several thousands square degrees, J-PAS †2 and J-PLUS †3 , each of them with a wide range of scientific applications, like e.g. large structure cosmology and Dark Energy, galaxy evolution, supernovae, Milky Way structure, exoplanets, among many others. To do that, JST and JAST are equipped with panoramic cameras under development within the J-PAS collaboration, JPCam and T80Cam respectively, which make use of large format (~ 10k x 10k) CCDs covering the entire focal plane. This paper describes in detail, from operations point of view, a comparison between the detailed cost of the global automation of the Observatory and the standard automation cost for astronomical facilities, in reference to the total investment and highlighting all benefits obtained from this approach and difficulties encountered. The paper also describes the engineering development of the overall facilities and infrastructures for the fully automated observatory and a global overview of current status, pinpointing lessons learned in order to boost observatory operations performance, achieving scientific targets, maintaining quality requirements, but also minimizing operation cost and human resources.

2008

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will be a ground-based, 30-m optical-IR alt-az telescope with a highly segmented primary mirror located in a remote location. Efficient science operations require the asynchronous coordination of many different sub-systems including telescope mount, three independent active optics sub-systems, adaptive optics, laser guide stars, and user-configured science instrument. An important high-level requirement is target acquisition and observatory system configuration must be completed in less than 5 minutes (or 10 minutes if moving to a new instrument). To meet this coordination challenge and target acquisition time requirement, a distributed software architecture is envisioned consisting of software components linked by a service-based software communications backbone. A master sequencer coordinates the activities of mid-layer sequencers for the telescope, adaptive optics, and selected instrument. In turn, these mid-layer sequencers coordinate the activities of groups of sub-systems. In this paper, TMT observatory requirements are presented in more detail, followed by a description of the design reference software architecture and a discussion of preliminary implementation strategies.