"Pi of the Sky" observing strategy

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"Pi of the Sky" observing strategy

• Marcin Molak
• Faculty of PhysicsWarsaw University of Technology

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Plan of presentation

• Short description of Pi of the Sky observing
  strategy
• Test toolkit for current scans
• Test toolkit for schedule script generator
• Plans for future
• Summary

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Observing strategy description

• Pi of the Sky system works autonomously
• For most of the time the cameras follow the Field
  Of View (FOV) of the HETE satellite(70 x 70)
• Twice a night (2x20 minutes) an all sky scanning
  is performed. 16 fields are visited and 3 images
  of each are taken by both cameras
• System automatically detects optical bursts.

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Cooperation with GCN

• The system is also listening to GCN alerts
  received directly. Should alert located outside
  the current FOV arrive, the mount automatically
  moves towards the target and exposures are being
  taken for 30 minutes

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Test application for current scans

• To check, how often we scan each field in our
  field of view, we have prepared database system,
  where we store important data.
• To visualize frequency of current scans we use
  business logic and web services application. Java
  applet gets data through nuSOAP JAX-RPC bridge
  and plots histogram.

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Test application for current scans
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Test application for scripts generator

• Schedule script should respect
• Moon phase
• Planets location
• And frequency of each field scan should be on the
  same level
• Thats why, we prepare application, which can
  parse script files and show histograms for us.

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Test application for scripts generator
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Plans for future

• Adjust both application to full scanning system
• Develop web services system for better data
  connection performance. We will use Tomcat Server
  and Java Servlet Technology instead of PHP and
  nuSOAP.

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Summary

• Autonomic observation strategy has been prepared
• It is reacting to internal and external (GCN)
  triggers.
• We use toolkit, designed in Java, to test our
  observation strategy.