eSTAR: Astronomers, agents and when robotic telescopes aren't

摘要

The eSTAR Project(1) uses intelligent agent technologies to carry out resource discovery, submit observation requests and analyse the reduced data returned from a network of robotic telescopes. The agents are capable of data mining and cross-correlation tasks using online catalogues and databases and, if necessary, requesting additional data and follow-up observations from the telescopes on the network. We discuss how the agent technologies used in the eSTAR prototype have matured and have now been deployed in the field on research class telescopes that on first inspection don't fit into the autonomous robotic telescope paradigm.