Weather monitoring has always been an element of observatory operations. For a robotic telescope there is the added complication that software needs to understand the ever changing atmospheric observing conditions in order to respond in real time, continuously balancing the schedule for both facility calibrations (i.e., standard stars) and targeted observations according to the TAC-assigned science priorities. For the Liverpool Telescope, in the past year we have been testing a new multi-threaded approach. We have long operated a single-element, integrated-all-sky, 10 m bolometer on site. To this we have added real-time photometric monitoring of field stars around the science target and analysis of publicly accessible weather satellite images. This gives us three estimates of any night's photometricity; two ground-based looking up through the cloud (optical and thermal IR) and one satellite-based looking down at the observatory. We present a comparison of the results from the different methods and share our experiences selecting between the complementary data sets to support real-time observing decisions.
The Liverpool Telescope has been in fully autonomous operation since 2004. The supporting data archive facility has largely been untouched. The data provision service has not been an issue although some modernisation of the system is desirable. This project is timely. Not only does it suit the upgrade of the current LT data archive, it is in line with the design phase of the New Robotic Telescope which will be online in the early-2020s; and with the development of a new data archive facility for a range of telescopes at the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand. The Newton Fund enabled us to collaborate in designing a new versatile generic system that serves all purposes. In the end, we conclude that a single system would not meet the needs of all parties and only adopt similar front-ends while the back-ends are bespoke to our respective systems and data-flows.
The preferred programming languages and operating systems used in writing and running astrometric software have changed over time. The Python language is now well supported by the scientific community which provides open-source standard libraries for astronomical calculation including Astropy,1 SciPy2 and NumPy.3 We surveyed available open source astrometric libraries and compare ICRS coordinate to observation transforms using recent releases of C source code and Python wrappers from the IAU Standard of Fundamental Astronomy4 (SOFA), against those using the US Naval Observatory Vector Astrometry Software5 (NOVAS). The selection of an underlying operating system with long term support is also an important aspect of maintaining a working telescope control system. The installation and operation of the libraries under both Linux Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) and Windows 10 are explored.
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