KEYWORDS: Astronomy, Photometry, Spectroscopy, Databases, Astrophysics, Data archive systems, Astrometry, Astronomical software, Open source software, Data transmission, Data storage
Introducing HERMES (HOP Enabled Rapid Message Exchange Service), an application which supports sharing and querying structured data containing targets, photometry, spectroscopy, astrometry, and more. Many branches of astronomy, particularly time-domain and multimessenger astrophysics, are driven by time-critical alerts. Coordinating the community-wide response to provide characterization observations of the alerts is critical to realizing many of the science goals in these fields. As part of the SCIMMA (Scalable CyberInfrastructure to support multimessenger astrophysics) project, HERMES provides a platform for users to share messages and data in a structured format that can be sent over the SCIMMA Kafka streams, while also delivering a queryable database of those messages. The goal of HERMES is to encourage more astronomers to share data in a common, machine-readable format. While the platform is robust and general enough to handle many kinds of astrophysical data, HERMES is especially useful for non-localized event follow-up such as gravitational wave or neutrino events and maintains relationships between non-localized events and related messages and targets of interest. We discuss the Domain-Specific Language (DSL) designed for sharing structured astronomical data through HERMES, which also supports formatting and submitting data to external services such as NASA’s GCN (General Coordinates Network) circulars or the TNS (Transient Name Server). Finally, we present the integration between HERMES and TOM (Target and Observation Management) Toolkit based systems, allowing TOM users to share or ingest data through HERMES.
Las Cumbres Observatory comprises 25 robotic telescopes hosting 6 instrument types at 7 sites. To manage the calibrations for such a large suite of instruments, LCO has developed a Target and Observation Manager (TOM) built on elements of the TOM Toolkit. In the Calibration-TOM, the fundamental assets to be managed are not astronomical targets (as with a TOM built for a science campaign) but the telescopes and instruments of the observatory. The Calibration-TOM is a web application that uses python code within a Django framework. Requests for recurring, nighttime calibrations are described by dynamic cadences, which are inserted into each instrument’s schedule with specified durations. In 2021, we began using the Calibration-TOM for observations of flux and RV standards for the NRES spectrographs, as well as for observations of photometric standards for all imagers. The Calibration-TOM makes the scheduling and outcomes of calibrations more transparent to operations personnel, expediting the identification of underperforming instruments. Other observatories supporting multiple instruments may benefit from creating similar TOM software.
Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope (LCOGT) is a unique worldwide network of dynamically scheduled, fully robotic optical telescopes, purpose built for time domain astronomy. The LCOGT network enters its second decade of operations in 2024. A flood of transient alerts are expected from the Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and multimessenger observatories. In 2023 LCOGT will complete the northern hemisphere 1-m telescope ring, currently four telescopes at McDonald and Teide Observatories, with the addition of two 1-m telescopes at Ali Observatory in Tibet. The southern ring is complete at the Siding Spring, Cerro Tololo and the South African Astronomical Observatories. LCOGT is an active partner in the Astrophysical Event Observatory Network (AEON) with NOIRLab facilities (Gemini Observatory, SOAR Observatory, and the Community Science and Data Center), to develop the infrastructure to efficiently carry out astronomical observations in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory LSST era. While the global pandemic has provided multiple operational challenges, hardware and software projects currently underway will make LCOGT an even more powerful transient follow-up facility in its second decade of operations.
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