“Robotic Telescopes”

Valeska Molina

May 5th, 2020

Astronomía observacional

PhD Karla Peña 1

 Telescopes
Telescope is an astronomical instrument use to observed distant object

Collecting light in wide wavelength

Has two function:

- Primary (gather light, focus)

- Secondary (resolve, magnify)

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 Basic telescope has two part...

Objective: to gather light →

lens/mirrors

Eyepiece: to magnify image

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 Types of telescope

- Refractors

- Reflectors

- Cardioptric

* Focus light with refraction (uses lens, first kind made)

Disadvantage: → Quality optics requires high tolerance

→ Chromatic aberration

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 Types of optical telescope

- Reflectors

- Reflectors

- Cardioptric

* Focus light by reflection (uses mirror)

Disadvantage: → Clean surface, spherical aberration

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 Types of optical telescope

- Refractors

- Reflectors

- Cardioptric

* a hybrid refracting/reflecting telescope

Disadvantage: → They may suffer a slight loss of light because of the

positioning of the secondary mirror. Also catadioptrics may suffer from image
shift, or a jump in focus, due to the primary mirror being moved when focusing.
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… Telescopes also classified by the task performed:

http://www.robotictelescope.org/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrograph
… Telescopes also classified by the task performed:

http://www.robotictelescope.org/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrograph
Some definitions…

Robot : A mechanical system which executes repetitive tasks with

good accuracy with human assistance. Ex: Robotic arm

Tele-operated robot: A mechanical system which executes a given

task with good accuracy and that can be modified with human
assistance. Ex: Submarine research robots

Intelligent robot: A mechanical system which executes a task with

good accuracy and is able to adapt itself changes during the task
execution without any kind of human assistance. Ex: robers, robotic
telescope

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… Robotic Telescopes (RT)
* Is a telescope that can make observations
without hands-on human control
* Is automatic and computer controller
* Run under control of a scheduler
* Use artificial intelligence

Advantage:

- Allow faster observation response time

- Respond quickly to alert broadcast
from satellites and begin in seconds
- Simultaneous observations

Disadvantage:
- Requires hard and a lot of work to built
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https://www.astro.louisville.edu/moore/cdk20/
Diagram system by RT

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 RCS design drivers

In designing the RCS, a number of factors had to be taken into account:

Reliability: the system will be left unattended for long periods and so must continue to function through
power failures and periods of lost internet connection without human intervention.

Fault-tolerance: the telescope system should be able to continue operating sensibly but perhaps with
degraded performance when instrument and other subsystems become unavailable.

Adaptability: deployment to other telescope systems is envisaged so the model needs to be readily
extendable to work with different TCS and ICS configurations.

Configurability: the RCS needs to be readily configurable in order to take into account varying
operational requirements and hardware configuration over time without the need for major software re-
writes.

Efficiency: - it should make best use of available time by taking into account environmental conditions
and availability of system resources - e.g. instruments, autoguider etc in its operational planning. Every
opportunity should be taken to increase efficiency by performing operations in parallel.

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https://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/About/
“The heart of a robotic telescope system is the observatory
control software (OCS)”

Python Java

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Science: gamma-ray bursts
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- Cassegrain 450 mm diameter, final focal length 850 mm
- 400 – 900 mm passband
- 2048 x 2048 CCD (13.5 µm pixels, pixel scale 3 arcsec/pixel)
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The Liverpool Telescope… observing robotically Since 2004

* Ritchey-Chretien Cassegrain
* 2 m diameter for primary mirror
* 0.62m diameter for secondary mirror
(moves axially for focus)
* 40 arcmin FoV
* pixel scale 0.22 arcsec/pixel
* 13 x 13 µm pixel size
* operating temperature -40°C

Has 6 instruments (optical and IR)

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https://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/About/
 The Liverpool Telescope… observing robotically Since 2004

Science: binaries, exoplanets, gamma-

ray bursts, others...

enclosure Pump room computer/IT

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https://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/About/
Down to Solar elevation -10°: the telescope usually spends 25-30 minutes on sky flats. 

The telescope usually obtains sky flats at the end of the night (to complement those
taken at the beginning) during morning twilight.
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https://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/About/
Different pipelines exist for different
instruments, based on their
performance characteristics and how
the data are to be archived. Note that
some level of data reduction is
available for all instruments 

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https://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/About/
Conclusions

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- The observing with RT are most quickly

- Also, RT can uses in educations (some RT are remote controlling)

- Exist different types of RT, but all have an small or median diameter

- Every time there are more publications that uses RT

* Develop of other science case
* Astrobiology implications

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https://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/About/
Thank’s!

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3 two-meter robotic telescope

Science: cool extra-solar planets, gamma-ray bursts

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