RTS2: Lessons learned from a widely distributed telescope network

摘要

RTS2 (Remote Telescope System 2) is a highly modular open source telescope and observatory management software package. It evolved from RTS, which was developed in Python to control a telescope aimed at observing optical transients of gamma ray burts. The development of a network system capable of operating robotic telescopes is both difficult and complicated. Along with continued software development one must be concerned with maintaining operations and obtaining results. This is a review of experiences gained building a network of robotic telescopes. It focuses on describing which issues are important during development of the robotic observatory software and requirements for future development of the RTS2 package. (C) 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.