GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 1 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by Adopting Grid Technology German e-Science Conference 2007 Baden-Baden, Germany May 2007 Thomas Granzer Frank Breitling Thomas Roeblitz (ZIB), Harry Enke (AIP), Michael Braun (AIP) Astrogrid-D

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 2 Overview Introduction Robotic Telescopes Components for the Integration Metadata Management Summary

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 3 Introduction: Astrophysical Institute Potsdam located in Potsdam ca. 30km west of Berlin, Germany, near the Schloßpark Babelsberg old institute with a long tradition - founded as the “Berliner Sternwarte” in 1711 still edits the worlds oldest astronomical journal that is still being published (1821) involved in many international projects (e.g. LBT, LOFAR, ICE-T, RAVE, PEPSI, PMAS, XMM- Newton, AstroGrid-D) more info at

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 4 Introduction: The AstroGrid-D project AstroGrid-D is  the name of the German Astronomy Community Grid grid.org/  a collaboration of 14 German institutes under the leadership of the AIP.  funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research  part of the D-Grid AstroGrid-D pursues the  development of a network of  robotic telescopes  using grid technology.

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 5 Introduction: Why robotic telescopes? Achieve optimal usage of the available observation time by minimal overhead times (fast operation) Allow fastest possible reaction to new discoveries (current record 5 sec.) Reduce costs of operation (e.g. no travel expenses, less infrastructure) Operation at remote and/or less developed sites becomes possible (e.g. Antarctica) More and more robotic telescopes become available, thusindividual costs are reduced.

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 6 Access to almost the entire sky at any time, without limitations of daytimes or the weather:  uninterrupted monitoring of long-term targets (e.g. stellar pulsation, search for extrasolar planets)  transient objects (e.g. GRBs) will always be accessible from parts of the network Simultaneous observations are possible:  multi-wavelength campaign  support of large facilities Eases the operation through:  standard interfaces for the operation  standard access to the data  reduced administrative barriers Access to almost the entire sky at any time, without limitations of daytimes or the weather:  uninterrupted monitoring of long-term targets (e.g. stellar pulsation, search for extrasolar planets)  transient objects (e.g. GRBs) will always be accessible from parts of the network Simultaneous observations are possible:  multi-wavelength campaign  support of large facilities Eases the operation through:  standard interfaces for the operation  standard access to the data  reduced administrative barriers

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 7 Introduction: Can grid technology be applied? Robotic telescopes can be treated as special resources in a grid. A robotic telescope executes a special job, an observation of a target. A similar approach can be seen in the International Virtual Observatory Association (observations already done: databases, observations ought to be done: telescopes)...but the essential difference is in scheduling the jobs! The time when an observation is executed may decide its scientific usefulness

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 8 Useful components have already been developed: Virtual organization (VO) management Resource management Job management Data management Metadata management Introduction: Why grid technology?

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 9 Robotic telescopes:Stella-I & Stella-II Teide Observatory, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain (2480m asl) Two 1.2m telescopes Instruments  Spectrograph  Imaging photometer Scientific Objectives  Doppler imaging  Search for extrasolar planets  Spectroscopic surveys  Simultaneous observations with larger facilities developed, owned and operated by the AIP, ideal testbed! Stella-I and Stella-II at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife. The shelter is opened as for observation.

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 10 Sequencer Scheduler CCD Spectrogra ph AdapterTelescope sequence definition object database command templates target commands to physical devices via TCP/IP or RS323 etc. target description Robotic telescopes: Stella Control System The Stella Control System (SCS) Generic operations package, is used for Stella-I & II and RoboTel Java based software, linked to outside world via RMI has an interactive and automatic operation mode has simulation mode for testing and development (e.g. of the grid-integration)

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 11 Workstation Globus Toolkit Workstation Globus Toolkit SC S RTML target RTML target RTML target RTML target RTML target Telescope Server Globus Toolkit Telescope Server Globus Toolkit RTML target RTML target RTML target Robotel AIP Observer's Office Information Server Stellaris Information Server Stellaris Computer Center SPARQL Data SPARQL Data RDF Metadata RDF Metadata RDF Metadata Components for the Integration: Architecture globusrun-ws RDF Metadata RDF Metadata

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 12 Components for the Integration: Architecture Scheduler Server Globus Toolkit Scheduler Server Globus Toolkit SC S RTML target RTML target RTML target RTML target RTML target Telescope Server Globus Toolkit Telescope Server Globus Toolkit RTML target RTML target RTML target Robotel AIP Observer's Office Information Server Stellaris Information Server Stellaris Computer Center SPARQL Data SPARQL Data RDF Metadata RDF Metadata RDF Metadata RDF Metadata RDF Metadata Extension to a Network by - introducing a scheduler - adding more telescopes globusrun-ws

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 13 Components for the Integration: Middleware which provides Job management:  WS GRAM (Grid Resource and Allocation Manager) with web service interface through endpoint reference (EPR)  An elementary set of grid commands for the job management, interactive access to resources and file transfer (globusrun-ws -submit / -status / -cancle, gsissh, gsiftp) Resource monitoring Virtual Organization (VO) management which is adapted by the AIP (VOMRS)

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 14 Components for the Integration: RTML Remote Telescope Markup Language (RTML) XML format defined through RMTL schema: sw.gwdg.de/XMLSchema/RTML/schemas/RTML-nightly.xsd provides description of elementary static and dynamic metadata (e.g. telescope hardware, setup and status, source catalogs, observation requests, observation history, schedules, weather information) standard defined by the Heterogeneous Telescope Network (HTN) adopted in AstroGrid-D

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 15 Metadata Management: Informations Service Stellaris development of AstroGrid-D by the ZIB (M. Högqvist) available at (Apache License) is used by AstroGrid-D for  grid resource monitoring (e.g. compute resources, telescopes)  job monitoring tested and runs stable metadata is exchanged and stored in RDF

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 16 Metadata Management: RDF RDF (Resource Description Framework) standard for storing of information is based on graph theory it presents information in triples as different formats exist  RDF/XML (W3C recommendation)  Notation 3 (N3) (W3C specification) is a development of the semantic web the SPARQL query language exists for retrieval of RDF information Subje ct Object Predicate

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 17 Metadata Management: RDF graph example of a partial RDF graph represents the location information of Stella-I (static metadata) Obtained with W3C RDF Validation Service (

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 18 Metadata Management: XSLT for Stellaris a conversion from RTML documents into RDF required developed an XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation) at AIP can transform arbitrary XML files into RDF/XML format (e.g. RTML) usage very simple, only two command line programs  xsltproc  cURL for uploading to Stellaris available at (Apache License)

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 19 Metadata Management: SPARQL SPARQL Query Language for RDF (W3C working draft) is the counterpart for RDF for retrieving information simple syntax for selected and sorted retrieval of information Perl modules exist for the integration into Perl scripts SPARQL web browser interface is implemented into Stellaris for a quick lookup of information The Stellaris SPARQL query interface for a web bowser. The SPARQL query retrieves the geographic location of all available telescopes sorted by their altitude.

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 20 Metadata Management: Telescope Map Web browser user interface Developed in AstroGrid-D by the ZIB (M. Högqvist) and AIP (F. Breitling) for access and display of telescope metadata Based on Google Maps and SPARQL available at grid.org/ (Apache License) grid.org/

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 21 Metadata Management: Job Monitoring Web browser user interface Developed in AstroGrid-D by the ZIB (M. Högqvist) & AIP (F. Breitling) currently used to display job-state metadata Based on „Simile“ Timeline  like Google Maps for time-based information  a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events.  available at (Apache License)

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 22 Summary: Achievements Five robotic telescopes are available to the AIP An architecture for the grid integration has been developed Metadata management has made progress  Information service has been developed  Metadata of telescope resources and observations can be provided  User interfaces are available for accessing the metadata The job management using the Globus WS GRAM is under development using a the Stella Control System in Simulation mode

GES 2007 Baden-Baden, Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 23 Summary: Next steps Providing of dynamic metadata of e.g. telescope states, weather information, recorded data, observation history Develope versatile scheduler which uses  static metadata, e.g. capabilities of telescopes, location  dynamic metadata, e.g. weather information, target visibilities, observation schedules  metadata of other telescopes simulation and testing of a network first observations proof that a network of robotic telescopes can be a very powerful instrument