Robotic telescope

A robotic telescope is an astronoand detector system that makes observations without the intervention of a human. In astronomical disciplines, a teless robotic if it makes those observations without beiuman, even if a human has to initiate the observations at the beginning of the night, or end them in the morning.

Design.

Robotic telescopes are complex systems that typically incorporate a number of subsystems. These subsystems include devices that provide telescope pointing capability, operation of the detector (typira), control of the dome or telescope enclosure, control over the telescope's focuser, detection of weather conditions, and other capabilities. Frequently these varying subsystems are presided over by a master pecting the results of its operations to ensure it is operating properly. An open loop telescope is sometimes said to be operating on faith, in that if something goes wrong, there is no way for the control system to detect it and compensate.
A closed loop system has the capability to evaluate its operations through redundant inputs to detect errors. A common such input would be position encoders on the telescope's axes of motion, or the capability of evaluating the system's images to ensure it was pointed at the correct field of view when they were exposed.

 

History of robotic telescopes.

Robotic telescopes were first developed by astronomers after electromechanical interfaces to computers became common at observatories. Early examples were expensive, had limited capabilities, and included a large number of uniquscopes early in their history.
By the early 1980s, with the availability of cheap computers, several viable robotic telescope projects were conceived, and a few were developed.Since the late 1980s, the University of Iowa has been in the forefront of robotic telescope development on the professional side. The Automated Telescope Facility developed in ts, was located on the roof of the physics building at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. They went on 1997. This system successfully observed variable stars and contributed observations to dozens of scientific papers. In May 2002, they completed the Rigel Telescope. The Rigel was a 0.37-meter (14.5-inch) F/14 built by Optical Mechanics, Inc. and controlled by the Talon program.Each of these was a progression toward a more automated and utilitavatory.
One of the largest current networks of robotic telescopes is RoboNet, operated by a consortium of UK universities. The Lincolnearch (LINEAR) Project is another example of a professional robotic telescope. LINEAR's competitors, the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search, Catalina Sky Survey, Spacewatch, and others, have also developed varying levels of automation.
In 2002, the RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) project pushed the envelope of automated robotic astronomy by becomingonomous closed–loop robotic telescope. RAPTOR was designed in 2000 and began full deployment in 2002. Its first light on one of the wide field instruments was in late 2001, with the second wide field system coming online in early 2002. Closed loop operations began in 20he goal of RAPTOR was to develop a system of ground-based telescopes that would reliably respond to satellite triggers and more importantly, identify transients in real-time and generate alse goals quite successfully. Now RAPTOR has been re-tuned to be the key hardware element of the Thinking Telescopes Technologies Project. Its new mandate will be the monitoring of the night sky looking for interesting and anomalous behaviors in persistent sources using some of the most advanced robotic software ever deployed. The two wide field systems are a mosaic of 6th magnitude. The wide field systems are separated by a 38km baseline. Supporting these wide field systems are two other operational telescopes. The first of these is a cataloging patrol instrument with a mosaic 16 square degree field of view down to 16 magnitude. The other system is a .4m OTA with a yielding a depth of 19-20th magnitude and a coverage of .35 dos Alamos National Laboratory (USA) and has been supported through the Laboratory's Directed Research and Development funds.
In 2004, some professional robotic telescopes were characterized by a lack of design creativity and a reliance on closed source and proprietary software. The software is usually unique to the telescope it was designed for and cannot be used on any other system. Often, robotic telescope software developed at universities becomes impossible to maintain and ultimately obsolete because the graduate students who wrote it move on to new positions, and their institutions lose their knowledge. Large telescope consortia or government funded laboratories don't tend to have this same loss of developers as experienced by universities. Professional systems generally feature very high observing efficiency and reliability. There is also an increasing tendency to adopt ASCOM technology at a few professional facilities (see following section).