Autonomous Observing and Control Systems for PAIRITEL, a 1.3m Infrared Imaging Telescope

摘要

The Peters Automated Infrared Imaging Telescope (PAIRITEL) is the first meter-class telescope operating as a fully robotic IR imaging system.Dedicated in October 2004, PAIRITEL began regular observations inmid-December 2004 as part of a 1.5 year commissioning period. The sys-tem was designed to respond without human intervention to new gamma-ray burst transients: this milestone was finally reached on November 9,2005 but the telescope had a number of semi-automated sub-10 minuteresponses throughout early commissioning. When not operating in Targetof Opportunity mode, PAIRITEL performs a number of queue scheduledtransient monitoring campaigns. To achieve this level of automation, wehave developed communicating tools to connect the various sub-systems:an intelligent queue scheduling database, run-time configurable observa-tion sequence software, a data reduction pipeline, and a master statemachine which monitors and controls all functions within and affectingthe observatory.