1. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 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 2.-4. May 2007 Thomas Granzer (tgranzer@aip.de),tgranzer@aip.de Frank Breitling (fbreitling@aip.de),fbreitling@aip.de Michael Braun (AIP), Harry Enke (AIP), Thomas Roeblitz (ZIB) Astrogrid-D

2. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 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

3. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 3 Introduction: The AstroGrid-D project ● AstroGrid-D is – the name of the German Astronomy Community Grid http://www.gac- 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.

4. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 4 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.

5. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 5 ● 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 Introduction: Why a network of telescopes?

6. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 6 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

7. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 7 Useful components have already been developed: ● Virtual organization (VO) management ● Resource management ● Job management ● Data management ● Metadata management Introduction: Why grid technology?

8. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 8 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.

9. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 9 Workstation Globus Toolkit Workstation Globus Toolkit SC S R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et Telescope Server Globus Toolkit Telescope Server Globus Toolkit R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et Rob. Telescope Observatory Observer's Office Information Server Stellaris Information Server Stellaris Computer Center SPAR QL Data SPAR QL Data RDF Metad ata RDF Metad ata RDF Metad ata Components for the Integration: Architecture globusrun-ws RDF Metad ata RDF Metad ata

10. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 10 Components for the Integration: Architecture Scheduler Server Globus Toolkit Scheduler Server Globus Toolkit SC S R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et Telescope Server Globus Toolkit Telescope Server Globus Toolkit R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et R T M L ta rg et Robotel AIP Observer's Office Information Server Stellaris Information Server Stellaris Computer Center SPAR QL Data SPAR QL Data RDF Metad ata RDF Metad ata RDF Metad ata RDF Metad ata RDF Metad ata Extension to a Network by - introducing a scheduler - adding more telescopes globusrun-ws

11. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 11 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)

12. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 12 Components for the Integration: RTML Remote Telescope Markup Language (RTML) ● adopted in AstroGrid-D ● format for static and dynamic metadata of telescope, e.g. – observation requests, observation histories, schedules, source catalogs – a telescope's hardware, setups and states – weather information ● XML format defined through RMTL schema (http://monet.uni- sw.gwdg.de/XMLSchema/RTML/schemas/RTML-nightly.xsd) ● standard defined by the Heterogeneous Telescope Network (HTN) (http://monet.uni-sw.gwdg.de/twiki/bin/view/RTML/WebHome)

13. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 13 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 http://www.gac-grid.org/ (Apache License)http://www.gac-grid.org/

14. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 14 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.

15. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 15 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 http://www.gac- grid.org/ (Apache License)http://www.gac- grid.org/

16. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 16 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. – http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/ ● available at http://www.gac-grid.org/ (Apache License)http://www.gac-grid.org/

17. GES 2007 Baden-Baden, 3.5.2007 Providing Remote Access to Robotic Telescopes by adopting Grid Technology T. Granzer & F. Breitling 17 Summary: Achievements ● Robotic telescopes are available in AstroGrid-D ● 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 with the Globus Toolkit is under development using a the Stella Control System in Simulation mode