Autonomous observing The Astronomer’s Last Stand Alasdair Allan School of Physics, University of Exeter, UK Iain Steele Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool JMU, UK Robert White Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM, USA Frederic Hessman Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany

ADASS XVII, Sept The eSTAR network

ADASS XVII, Sept eSTAR in a nutshell

ADASS XVII, Sept How does it work? User Agent User Agent Embedded Agent Embedded Agent CREDIT: Liverpool John Moores University UI

ADASS XVII, Sept Other Clients Other Clients Event Network Reactive case? User Agent User Agent Embedded Agent Embedded Agent UI Alert Client Alert Client

ADASS XVII, Sept The eSTAR/HTN Protocol Registry User Resource Resource Discovery Phase 0 Scoring Request Confirm Reject Observed Update Fail

ADASS XVII, Sept Parallel Strands Two parallel strands –VOEvent standard –HTN and eSTAR standards VOEvent standard has been designed to –transport timely information concerning transient events HTN standards has been designed to –allow the recipient of an event message to negotiate for, and obtain, follow-up observations to these reported events from a heterogeneous collection of networked telescopes

ADASS XVII, Sept The eSTAR network CREDIT: Nik Szymanek User Agents The VO Embedded Agents Embedded Agents Embedded Agent Embedded Agent Gateway Service Gateway Service CREDIT: Liverpool John Moores University Robonet-1.0 Embedded Agent Embedded Agent

ADASS XVII, Sept Smarter than average? How well should one bit of software believe other bits of software when they tell it somewhere? Currently running simulations in Exeter –keeping track of scores from telescopes and whether they actually returned data, i.e. are they “lying” to us? –using this to modify our decision making process in the future, hopefully weighting things towards the telescopes that don’t “lie” about how well they can perform observations Emerging social conventions?

ADASS XVII, Sept Event Broker Event Broker User interfaces? The Grid User Agent User Agent Embedded Agent Embedded Agent CREDIT: AstroGrid Project HTN Registry CREDIT: The eSTAR Project Event Network CREDIT: The eSTAR Project

ADASS XVII, Sept Real-time status

ADASS XVII, Sept Event Network Google Sky Event Publisher Event Publisher Embedded Web Server Embedded Web Server Alert Client Alert Client The Web

ADASS XVII, Sept Doing real science

ADASS XVII, Sept PLANET/Robonet-1.0 Campaign First look observations of OGLE-EWS events –first look for MOA will be done next season Continuous monitoring of ongoing OGLE and MOA events –maximise planet discovery rate Rapid response to possible anomalies in real-time –trigger override observations –event notification Closed-loop system

ADASS XVII, Sept Event Publisher Event Publisher Event Network First look observations User Agent User Agent Embedded Agent Embedded Agent OGLE EWS Alert Client Alert Client CREDIT: Allyson Polak, University of Virginia CREDIT: Liverpool John Moores University Event Publisher Event Publisher CREDIT: F. Abe, A. Gilmore, F. Gunn, J. Hearnshaw, Y. Itow, Y. Muraki, Y. Nishimura, T. Sako, T. Sekiguchi

ADASS XVII, Sept Ongoing monitoring User Agent User Agent Embedded Agents Embedded Agents Prioritisation Service Prioritisation Service Event Publishers Event Publishers Event Network Robonet-1.0

ADASS XVII, Sept Anomaly hunting Real time data reduction Real time data analysis –See “An anomaly detector with immediate feedback to hunt for planets of Earth mass and below by microlensing”, 2007, MNRAS, M. Dominik, N. J. Rattenbury, A. Allan, S. Mao, D. M. Bramich, M. J. Burgdorf, E. Kerins, Y. Tsapras, Ł. Wyrzykowski, in press Reactive scheduling

ADASS XVII, Sept Closing the loop User Agent User Agent Embedded Agents Embedded Agents Robonet-1.0 Event Network Allows real-time analysis of incoming micro-lensing data from PLANET, OGLE, MOA, MicroFUN and Robonet-1.0 – looks for deviations that might be plantetary anomalies – asks for more data if it’s not sure – triggers target of opportunity if it is sure DB

ADASS XVII, Sept …and finally?

ADASS XVII, Sept Conclusions Autonomous observing –IVOA standard VOEvent messaging –HTN standard RTML messaging –eSTAR represents a “turn-key” system Operating in three modes –event driven –long term monitoring –reactive follow-up See for more information

ADASS XVII, Sept The End