1. Build in 1998 by CNRS. Fully robotized. D=25 cm f=85 cm, CCD Andor 2x2k Field = 1.9x1.9°, sampling 3.3 arcsec/pix About 12 GRBs/year Variable stars Minor planets Follow up of ToO The TAROT observatory presented by Alain KLOTZ – Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements Toulouse & Observatory of Haute-Provence Data acquisition and telescope control: softwares and past experience

2. Basic idea : I do other things during nights instead pushing buttons ! 1st consequence : There is a huge amount of data to process and now I spend nights to push buttons to reduce data ! 2nd consequence : I spend a lot of daytime to select many targets. Now, I am occupied nights (by processing) & days (for selections) ! Evoluted idea : The robotic observatory MUST include the SCHEDULE and the data REDUCTION => a robotic observatory is not only a computed controled telescope but there is also a lot of software work! SOME RULES FOR ROBOTIC OBSERVATORIES

3. Environnement : housekeeping, permanent internet, electric power Requests PlanningDrivingProcessing Hardware Data The TAROT observatory – A GLOBAL VIEW

5. Electricity 1 power inverter (onduleur) drived switches (disjoncteurs) Flat-field lamp Motors 5 motors + encoders + protocol (roof, , filters, focus) Mechanics Rolling roof Robust fork Cogwheels (roue, vis sans fin) Filter wheel (BVRI C) Meteo station (rain, humidity, wind) Flat-field screen Computers 3 PCs (OS Win32) Webcam The TAROT observatory - HARDWARE

6. For each PC VNC, FileZillaServer (FTP), Apache (HTTP), AudeLA AudeLA (A.U.D.E Logicel d'Astronomie) A free GNU public software : http://audela.ccdaude.com C/C++ ANSI for basic functions (image processing, celestial mechanics) called by Tcl/Tk scripts for nice batchs Robotic application for AudeLA A Tcl/Tk event loop that calls C/C++ functions CGI to process web formulars (to acces to requests & processed data) The TAROT observatory - SOFTWARE input (e.g. a raw image) output (e.g. processed image)

7. USERS User account, Priority (0 to 100), Quota (0% to 100%) Must publish or teaching. Fit TAROT Tcl/Tk scripts for each user program Send their program using a customized TAROT web interface REQUESTS & SCENES Conversion of the user program into a common description : An observation REQUEST is composed by a series of SCENES A SCENE is the basic observation block : a slew to coordinates 1 to 6 exposures (time + filter) constraints (range of dates, minimum elevation, moon) SCHEDULE Selection : sorts scenes by priority and by date of set. Insertion : each sorted scene is included if the user quota is not over ~95% of the night is occupied and every user is satisfied The TAROT observatory - PLANNING

8. THE MAIN LOOP Checks that every hardware module is alive and ready Ask to the planning the next scene to observe Convert scene parameters Pointing model (telescope flexures, etc.) Convertion of angles to motors units etc... Send converted scene parameters to each hardware component SECURITY An independant software checks that everything is alive The TAROT observatory - DRIVING

9. COMMON PROCESSING Dark and flat corrections Special filter in the case of trailed images (GRBs, occultations, satellites) Sextractor list USNO-A2 list Match the lists to compute WCS keywords for astrometry Complete header informations (FWHM, number of matched stars, etc.) Archive of FITS image and the corresponding Sextrator list SPECIAL PROCESSING Reduce data from image to a form directly usable for the user e.g. (julian day, magnitude) for the RRLyr program e.g. the image of star trail for a star occultation by an asteroid e.g. Web pages to help to analyze quickly a GRB event The TAROT observatory - PROCESSING

10. SCHEDULERSEQUENCER SUPERVISION OF THE OBSERVATORY STATES SECURITY GRB ALERTS MOTORS, METEO, CAPTORS, POWER SUPPLY MOTORS, METEO, CAPTORS, POWER SUPPLY, CAMERA REQUESTS STANDARD IMAGES PROCESSING SPECIALIZED DATA PROCESSING PROCESSED IMAGES PROCESSED DATA GLOBAL VIEW OF THE TELESCOPE CONTROL element visible by users (WEB) software hardware Légend : Data Bases of TAROT USERS

11. The TAROT observatory – STATISTICS: 50 000 images / years Efficiency : 90% of time ready to observe

12. The TAROT observatory – SKY COVERAGE

13. The TAROT observatory – SOME RESULTS GRB 050730 z=4 Supernova NGC 6946 occultation of star by Wallia ASTRA

14. The TAROT observatory – A SECOND OBSERVATORY IN CHILE