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Conference 13101
Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy VIII
16 - 20 June 2024 | Room G314, North - 3F
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Session 1:
Project Overviews and Progress
16 June 2024 • 10:30 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Petr Kubánek, Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Chile), Jeff Mader, W. M. Keck Observatory (United States)
13101-1
16 June 2024 • 10:30 - 10:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, operational since 1979, currently has five scientific instruments ranging from a few years old to decades old, making it highly productive today. At this world-class facility, computing systems were built and software was developed to support some of the first and largest mosaic CCD cameras, control the telescope, transition from classical observing to queue scheduled observing, and to allow it to be remotely controlled. This involved many choices of computing platforms, programming languages, and significant open source software development. Software tools and computing infrastructure have been continually adapted, purchased, made in house, and maintained. These "life cycles" are not easy to predict at their start. A retrospective analysis of how these have played out for over 40 years can inform future projects at CFHT and in astronomy in general. We detail the major decision points, and speculate how outcomes would have been different had we taken alternative paths. We discuss a rationale for making software choices in future projects.
13101-2
16 June 2024 • 10:50 - 11:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The SKA Observatory is an international organization whose mandate is to build and operate two multi-purpose radio telescope arrays. The SKA Low Frequency Telescope array, located in the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia, with the observing range 50-350 MHz, will consist of more than 131,072 log-periodic antennas organised as 512 stations. The SKA Mid Frequency Telescope array, located in the Karoo region, South Africa, with the observing range 350 MHz - 15 GHz, will comprise 197 offset-Gregorian dishes. The Telescopes will be delivered in stages, however, much of the Control System functionality is required early in the construction to support integration and verification. This paper provides a technical overview of the SKA Telescope Control System, discusses the design patterns and technology choices, and provides some
reflections on lessons learned during the early stages of development.
13101-3
16 June 2024 • 11:10 - 11:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The European Solar Telescope (EST) aims to become the most ambitious ground-based solar telescope in Europe. This paper summaries the planned architecture, software practices adopted at the moment for the development environment and future lines. EST has adopted a mix of proven software from existing telescopes that are suited to the telescope requirements with new development systems, CI/CD practices and agile methodologies among others.
13101-4
16 June 2024 • 11:30 - 11:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is a 39 meters optical telescope under construction in the Chilean Atacama
desert.
The control software is under advanced development and the system is slowly taking shape for first light in
2028.
ESO is directly responsible for coordination functions and control strategies requiring astronomical domain
knowledge. Industrial contractors are instead developing the low-level control of individual subsystems.
We are now implementing the coordination recipes and integrating the local control systems being delivered by
contractors. System tests are performed in the ELT Control Model in Garching, while waiting for the
availability of individual subsystems at the telescope.
This paper describes the status of development for individual subsystems, of the high-level coordination
software and of the system integration on the control model, focusing on testing and integration challenges.
13101-5
16 June 2024 • 11:50 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA, will be moved to Chajnantor Plateau, Chile, by the end of 2023, and renamed as Leighton Chajnantor Telescope (LCT). Its scientific objectives include multiwavelength imaging and spectroscopic survey of the galactic plane, magnetic fields in star formation via dust polarimetry, etc. To achieve these objectives, the instrumentation and control systems of LCT need to be upgraded such that its technological criteria can be improved significantly. This necessitates a comprehensive reconstruction of the computer, software, and data systems of LCT. In this work, we propose a reconstruction scheme with four phases, i.e., (1) synthetic system design, (2) infrastructure reconstruction, (3) application systems reconstruction, and (4) experiment and implementation. This work will provide a fundamental framework for upgrading LCT’s instrumentation and control systems, thereby enhancing its scientific capabilities.
Break
Lunch Break 12:10 - 13:20
Session 2:
Observatory/Telescope Control I
16 June 2024 • 13:20 - 15:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Gianluca Chiozzi, European Southern Observatory (Germany), Petr Kubánek, Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Chile)
13101-6
16 June 2024 • 13:20 - 13:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Dragonfly Spectral Line Mapper (DSLM) is a groundbreaking mosaic telescope, integrating four mounts with arrays of Canon telephoto lenses and specialized filters for deep imaging of the circumgalactic medium in nearby galaxies. Its operation requires a robust communication network to control the overr-700 components comprising the instrument. This paper introduces DSLM's software stack, centered around the Python-based Dragonfly Communication Protocol (DCP) and 120 FastAPI web servers on Raspberry Pis for hardware management. Key features include real-time monitoring, Docker containerization, and AWS integration. The development of user-friendly GUIs using frameworks like Streamlit, Solara, and Panel is also discussed.
13101-7
16 June 2024 • 13:40 - 14:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The US Naval Observatory (USNO) operates a wide range of telescopes, from historic meter-class telescopes through modern portable commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems. As the number and variety of systems increases, maintaining separate control software for each telescope becomes impractical. We have implemented telescope control software in Python that allows us to quickly and safely unify interactions with and outputs from a large variety of telescopes. We will discuss the design and operations of the TCS, including examples of how the flexible nature enables similar control for vastly different system architectures and observational goals.
13101-8
16 June 2024 • 14:00 - 14:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
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In this contribution, we examine the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX), a 12m telescope in Chile's Andes, developed for effective remote operations at 5107m altitude. We will discuss the key features enabling APEX's successful seven-year remote operation, including its robust network system and advanced monitoring system, featuring a redundant database with master/slave topology at both control and high sites, and a control room infrastructure for continuous monitoring and failure alerts through trend analysis.
The focus will be on how APEX's experience and lessons learned can guide remote operations for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) within the Integrated Operation Program (IOP), aiming to unify VLT and ELT into a single observatory. We will compare the remote operation systems of VLT and APEX, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, to inform and enhance the future remote operations strategy for ELT and VLT, emphasizing efficiency, safety, and operational synergy.
13101-9
16 June 2024 • 14:20 - 14:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Observation Execution Tool (OET) is part of the Observatory Science Operations (OSO) tools developed for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). This paper concentrates on the design decisions and challenges in the development of the OET and how it solves specific problems such as running concurrent observations on multiple subarrays while remaining responsive to the user.
13101-10
16 June 2024 • 14:40 - 15:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The "Gran Telescopio de Canarias" (GTC) is an optical-infrared 10-meter segmented mirror telescope at the ORM observatory in Canary Islands (Spain). The GTC Control System (GCS) is a distributed object and component-oriented system. In the first developments, the different motion control and sensor systems were quite coupled to the technologies that were used for their implementation. This work has been the result of the evolution of these developments carried out in the field rotation, acquisition and guiding systems of the focal stations updated in recent years. All the knowledge acquired in this context has been reflected in a new design, generalizing concepts such as mechanism, axis, drive, fieldbus protocol and access library, in such a way that the components of the coordination package are completely decoupled from the technology that is used for the control and monitoring of movement. On the one hand, this design provides simplicity, since the creation of new devices is reduced to specifying a configuration. And on the other hand, it provides stability, focusing the points of variability on the simple extension of new technologies that will be included into the system.
13101-11
16 June 2024 • 15:00 - 15:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Local Volume Mapper (LVM) is a robotic survey, part of the fifth iteration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which aims to obtain integral field spectroscopy of over 4300 square degrees in the plane Milky Way and the Local Volume. LVM operates from a fully automated facility at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, without in-person or remote observers. In this paper, we review the considerations that drove the design of the robotic facility, discuss the technical details of the implementation, and provide an overview of the commissioning of the robotic system, the first few months of operation, and lessons learned during this process. In particular, we review the hardware and software architecture, the use of Kubernetes clusters for the deployment of highly multiplexed services, the safety and alerting procedures, and tools developed for monitoring and visualisation of the facility and survey progress. We conclude by discussing the commissioning and first few months of operation of the robotic facility and highlight lessons learned that can inform the development of future mid-sized robotic facilities.
Break
Coffee Break 15:20 - 15:50
Session 3:
Software Testing/Quality
16 June 2024 • 15:50 - 17:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Alastair J. Borrowman, Observatory Sciences Ltd. (United Kingdom), Valentina Alberti, INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste (Italy)
13101-13
16 June 2024 • 16:10 - 16:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Data Mining can be applied to the set of results obtained by testing a specific SKA software component. Considering the SKA complexity, the reliability of all the software components is of critical importance. This study goes in the direction of setting up a testing process that employs data mining on test data and that allows to
discover bugs and to understand the cause of unwanted software behaviour, even when these are not revealed by a simple regression testing strategy.
13101-14
16 June 2024 • 16:30 - 16:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The upcoming NASA Pandora Mission, scheduled for launch in 2025, will provide revolutionary new exoplanet transmission spectra in the crucial context of their host stars. Pandora will provide at least 10 wavelength-resolved transits of 20 unique exoplanets, each with 24 hours of stellar baseline per transit. This will provide the vital context needed to disentangle stellar contamination from exoplanet transmission spectroscopy around cool stars, and understand the impact of star spots on retrieved atmospheric properties. Pandora will be equipped with i) a visible detector, providing time-series photometry at 550nm, and ii) near-infrared detector, providing R=30 spectra from 0.9 to 1.6 microns with at least 150ppm precision at j=9. Over the course of this talk, I will discuss simulations built by the Pandora team to determine the expected data quality and science performance of the observatory. The mission's open source software can be used to generate expectations of Pandora’s performance on a wide range of scientific objects, and is used by the team to make decisions across the project life time.
13101-15
16 June 2024 • 16:50 - 17:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) is a fully autonomous robotic four metre class telescope located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM) on La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The autonomous nature requires a robust, fault tolerant, real time control system. This is achieved by using proven industrial Beckhoff programmable logic controllers (PLCs) with a Ethercat data bus for real time operation creating a distributed system. The PLC code is developed using a unit testing framework which lowers the risk of breaking expensive hardware during code changes and allows extra functionality to be added easily. The PLCs are controlled using the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) protocol. The telescope functional safety will be tightly integrated with Beckhoff Twinsafe technology allowing complete telemetry all the way up the software stack.
13101-16
16 June 2024 • 17:10 - 17:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) is the next-generation atmospheric Cherenkov gamma-ray Observatory. The Array Control and Data Acquisition (ACADA) system is the central element for the Observatory on-site operations: it controls, supervises, and handles the data generated by the telescopes and auxiliary instruments (array elements). Considering the criticality of the ACADA system for future Observatory operations, corresponding quality assurance provisions have been made at the different steps of the software development lifecycle. To enable higher-level tests an ACADA test cluster and a separate software integration and test cluster have been established that allow for the off-site testing of ACADA standalone, or of the integrated software packages of ACADA and of the corresponding array elements. This methodology has been applied for the first time in the context of the integration of ACADA with the first CTAO Large-sized Telescope (LST-1) in October 2023.
Monday Plenary Session
17 June 2024 • 08:30 - 10:00 Japan Standard Time | National Convention Hall, 1F
Join us for the Monday morning plenary talks.
Break
Coffee Break 10:00 - 10:30
Session 4:
Instrumentation Control
17 June 2024 • 10:30 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Jorge Ibsen, Joint ALMA Observatory (Chile), Petr Kubánek, Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Chile)
13101-17
17 June 2024 • 10:30 - 10:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has made a significant progress in the implementation of a new software framework, the Instrument Control System Framework (IFW) tailored to facilitate the development of upcoming astronomical instruments at the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). This framework offers a complete, scalable and adaptable infrastructure to support the diverse needs of instrument control. This framework is the solution provided by ESO for all new instruments in the ELT, as well as for the forthcoming instruments in the VLT. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture, design principles, key features of this software project.
13101-18
17 June 2024 • 10:50 - 11:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Modern astronomical satellites generate large volumes of data, necessitating efficient onboard data processing and high-speed data downlink. Reflecting this trend is the Visible Extragalactic background RadiaTion Exploration by CubeSat (VERTECS) 6U Astronomical Nanosatellite. The observation of Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) is expected to generate a substantial amount of image data, particularly within the confines of CubeSat capabilities. This paper introduces the VERTECS Camera Control Board (CCB), an open-source payload interface board leveraging Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components, with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 at its core. The VERTECS CCB serves as the sole interface between the VERTECS bus system and astronomical imaging payload. Responsible for mission data processing, it will facilitate high-speed communication with the imaging payload and X-band transmitter. This paper delves into the development of the VERTECS CCB, offering insights into the design and validation of this next-generation payload interface.
13101-19
17 June 2024 • 11:10 - 11:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST) is a survey telescope that achieves world-class levels of efficiency and field of view in terms of surveying capabilities. The WFST Prime Focus Camera Control System (CCS) is a complex distributed system composed of multiple subsystems. It is responsible for controlling diverse devices within each subsystem, monitoring their operational status, scheduling these devices to complete operational processes, receiving, managing, and storing image data, and providing an interface to the observation control system to facilitate time-domain survey observations. To ensure the survey efficiency of WFST and achieve a series of scientific observation objectives, we designs an Event-Driven Architecture(EDA) named RACS-CCS based on the Remote Autonomous Control System 2nd(RACS2) and the Mosaic Scientific Camera Software Development Kit (SDK). multiple components are designed to complete the prime focus camera control processes and a set of generic state transition modes for the exposure-readout process are defined. Based on the static analysis tools and modular testing methods, multiple key performance indicators of the system were tested.
13101-20
17 June 2024 • 11:30 - 11:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The 4-meter Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) instrument uses 2436 individually positioned optical fibres to couple the light of targets into its spectrographs. The Fibre Target Alignment (FTA) software controls all aspects of the 4MOST instrument that are involved to position the 2448 spines of the AESOP positioner to their target locations closer than 10um RMS, within 90 seconds.
We present the FTA control software architecture, the interaction of sub-components and the different operation modes of the system. Due to the complexity of the system, comprehensive debugging and visualization tools have been developed which allow a detailed understanding and interaction of the entire system.
To develop the control software, a full end-to-end simulator has been created, which closes the loop between metrology image simulation, simulated fibre positioning and all control aspects in between.
13101-21
17 June 2024 • 11:50 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
We present an overview of the software architecture designed for the ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph (ANDES) spectrograph for the ELT. We detail about both control software, based on the current ESO Instrument Control Framework, and science tools focusing on the key architectural decisions we have made.
Break
Lunch Break 12:10 - 13:20
Session 5:
AI and ML Applied to Control
17 June 2024 • 13:20 - 15:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Gianluca Chiozzi, European Southern Observatory (Germany), Petr Kubánek, Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Chile)
13101-22
17 June 2024 • 13:20 - 13:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
A study to examine the potential benefits of applying Deep-learning methods, specifically Feedforward Neural Networks (FNN) instead or in conjunction with traditional Static Pointing Error Models (SPEMs) for astronomical instruments’ Blind Pointing Error compensation. Ambitious project like the ongoing study for the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) inspired to investigate possible improvements of traditional Blind Pointing Error Modeling. The study assesses the practicality and applicability of FNNs by applying them to data from real instruments in operation: A MeerKAT+ telescope from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) which extend the current MeerKAT Radio Telescope Array at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) site in the Meerkat National Park in South Africa and a SATCom antenna for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite communication.
13101-23
17 June 2024 • 13:40 - 14:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
We present a machine learning model based on deep encoder-decoder architecture that transforms an astronomical image into a latent space representation of the spatially varying Point Spread Functions (PSFs) within the image. This learned compressed representation can then be queried with a pixel position in order to create a realistic synthetic PSF for a transient source at that pixel. Our method is demonstrated using data from the Argus Pathfinder array’s transient detection pipeline. This methodology allows for more cost effective generation of 100M+ image datasets for training transient detection pipelines and could be generalized to other next generation transient surveys.
13101-24
17 June 2024 • 14:00 - 14:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
We present results on integrating machine learning (ML) methods with two real-time control libraries: common scalable and modular infrastructure for real-time control (COSMIC) and compute and control for adaptive optics (CACAO). We test the integration with COSMIC on simulation and with CACAO on the Subaru coronagraphic extreme adaptive optics (SCExAO) instrument.
Our proposed solution’s pipeline is formed by a dual-stage ML system. The first stage consists of a very deep neural network (DNN) that maps wavefront sensor (WFS) images to phase and is trained offline. The second stage consists of predictive control with a more compact DNN. The predictive control stage is trained online, providing an adaptive solution to changing atmospheric conditions but adding extra complexity to the pipeline.
We implement the inference stage with NVIDIA’s TensorRT to accelerate the DNNs inference, and we integrate it with COSMIC and CACAO. The results show an improvement in accuracy over a classical integrator, as well as fulfilling the real-time requirements to operate at a high cadence.
13101-25
17 June 2024 • 14:20 - 14:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The WIYN 3.5m Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory hosts a suite of optical and near-infrared instruments, including an extreme precision, fiber-fed optical spectrograph, NEID, built for exoplanet radial velocity studies. In order to minimize external radial velocity errors, NEID has strict requirements on stellar image positioning and guiding performance, which have exceeded the native capability of the telescope’s original pointing and tracking system. In order to improve the operational efficiency of the telescope we have developed a novel telescope pointing system, built on a recurrent neural network, that does not rely on the usual pointing models (TPoint or other quasi-physical bases). In this talk, I will discuss the development of this system and how the intrinsic properties of the pointing problem informed our network design. I will also discuss plans for the generalization of this system, so that it can be fit to any acquisition/tracking system.
13101-26
17 June 2024 • 14:40 - 15:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Submillimeter Array (SMA) requires precise full-sky blind
pointing for its eight 6m antennas, aiming for an error within 3",
a fraction of the 34" FWHM beam at 345 GHz. SMA's typical
2-3" rms pointing accuracy is crucial for efficient array operation,
especially with 4 to 6 antenna relocations across 24 pads in various
configurations each semester. Traditional calibration using optical
guidescopes for mount model errors has shifted to interferometric
pointing measurements on quasars, for full model acquisition and
baseline calibration. Following every array reconfiguration,
mechanical imperfections in antenna mounting lead to significant
deviations in azimuth encoder offset and axis tilt parameters,
complicating pointing accuracy. To overcome this, a three-layer
feed-forward neural network, trained on over 10 years of data for
each antenna-pad configuration, predicts post-reconfiguration
changes. This approach, currently under evaluation and refinement,
aims to expedite recalibration, indicating potential substantial
reductions in calibration time and enhanced operational efficiency.
Lightning Talks
17 June 2024 • 15:00 - 15:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Gianluca Chiozzi, European Southern Observatory (Germany), Petr Kubánek, Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Chile)
Poster Presenters: Lightning Talks are concise 3-minute oral presentations that tell the big picture story of your work or of a topic you are particularly interested in. You can use them to introduce your poster and attract people for a separate discussion.
Break
Coffee Break 15:20 - 15:50
Session 6:
Data Management, Processing and Pipelines I
17 June 2024 • 15:50 - 17:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Jeff Mader, W. M. Keck Observatory (United States), George Kosugi, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (Japan)
13101-27
17 June 2024 • 15:50 - 16:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Specreduce is an Astropy-affiliated python package whose goal is to be a toolbox of functions and utilities that are relevant to the reduction of spectroscopic data. It is largely focused on optical/IR spectroscopy where the raw data consists of an image projected from a spectrograph onto a 2D imaging detector. The way the spectral and spatial information is encoded into these 2D images can be quite complex and varied (e.g. multi-object vs multi-fiber vs integral field spectroscopy). Methods and algorithms for handling this variety of data have been implemented across many previous and existing data pipelines. Specreduce aims to collect these best practices into a common, shared space that facilitates more collaboration and easier development of future spectroscopic pipelines.
13101-28
17 June 2024 • 16:10 - 16:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
With active time-domain surveys like the Zwicky Transient Facility, the anticipated Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time, and multi-messenger experiments such as LIGO/VIRGO/KANGRA for gravitational wave detection and IceCube for high-energy neutrino events, there is a new era in both time-domain and multi-messenger astronomy. The Astro2020 decadal survey highlights effectively responding to these astronomical alerts in a timely manner as a priority, and thus, there is an urgent need for the development of a seamless follow-up infrastructure at existing facilities that are capable of following up on detections at the surveys’ depths.
At the W. M. Keck Observatory, we are actively constructing critical infrastructure, aimed at facilitating the Target-of-Opportunity trigger, optimizing observational planning, streamlining data acquisition, and enhancing data product accessibility. We provide an overview of these developing services and place them in context of existing observatory infrastructure like the Keck Observatory Archive and Data Services Initiative.
13101-29
17 June 2024 • 16:30 - 16:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
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Moving into the age of Time Domain Astronomy, robust, automated data reductions systems become essential. Here we present BANZAI-FLOYDS, a fully automated long-slit data reduction pipeline for the FLOYDS spectrograph at Las Cumbres Observatory. BANZAI-FLOYDS is fully written in Python, implementing wavelength calibration, fringe correction, object detection and tracing, telluric correction and flux calibration. The pipeline builds on the BANZAI library which handles the data flow and engineering allowing BANZAI-FLOYDS to only focus on spectroscopic processing. This design enables modularity of the processing stages allowing rapid development and encourages reuse for other spectrographs.
13101-30
17 June 2024 • 16:50 - 17:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a next-generation ground-based CMB experiment, capable of mapping the CMB sky with unprecedented precision and speed. The massive scale of SO necessitates efficient software infrastructure to support its daily operation from observation scheduling to data packaging and reduction. In this presentation, I will give an overview of the design and the status of the observatory scheduling system as well as an automated workflow system deployed in SO that coordinates daily data packaging and reduction.
13101-31
17 June 2024 • 17:10 - 17:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
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METIS, the Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph, will be one the first instruments at the ESO Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). The myriad of available observing capabilities requires an equally complex data reduction pipeline to turn raw data into scientific useful data product. The new "ESO Data Processing System" (EDPS) framework (Freudling+ 2023) is being used as the basic engine of the METIS pipeline. As such multiple programming languages (Python, C) are being employed for the development. Development activities and milestones have been planned in such a way as to concurrently support verification and testing activities of the other METIS subsystems during the MAIT phase. In this proceedings paper we present the final design of the METIS pipeline and the detailed development plan for the implementation phase ending 2027.
Tuesday Plenary session
18 June 2024 • 08:30 - 10:00 Japan Standard Time | National Convention Hall, 1F
Join us for the Tuesday morning plenary talks.
Break
Coffee Break 10:00 - 10:30
Session 7:
AI and ML
18 June 2024 • 10:30 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
13101-32
18 June 2024 • 10:30 - 10:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
High-performance computing (HPC)-based numerical simulations are indispensable in astrophysics and cosmology (A&C), aiding scientific understanding of celestial phenomena. These simulations model complex physical processes underlying observations, crucial for interpretation. Advancements in computational power promise transformative scientific discoveries through larger-scale simulations, especially critical in astrophysics, a field devoid of traditional lab experiments. Exascale computing systems pose a challenge as existing numerical codes aren't tailored for these complex architectures, limiting their potential. Recognising this gap, SPACE's primary aim is to adapt current A&C codes for pre-exascale HPC architectures funded by EuroHPC JU and future systems. This initiative, involving scientists, code developers, HPC experts, and hardware & software manufacturers, aims to redesign eight prominent European A&C HPC codes. The goal is to re-design these codes for efficient utilization of upcoming computing architectures. SPACE's efforts also focus on advancing workflows using machine learning and visualisation building an exascale ready numerical Laboratory for A&C.
13101-33
18 June 2024 • 10:50 - 11:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
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Grammar Evolution is one of the most popular approaches to automatic evolutionary computation, proposed to use genetic algorithms to generate programs in any programming language. Here, we explore using grammar evolution on a problem of symbolic regression to generate mathematical expressions that can describe astronomical PSFs. If machine learning regression is a type of problem in which the system must learn to produce a best value for each possible input, symbolic regression solves this problem by proposing a symbolic expression that generates the outputs.
We have applied this approach to point-like source images from the Hubble Space Telescope’s WFPC2 camera. Comparisons are made to analytical PSF models previously used in astrometric studies, such as elliptical, 2D Moffat and Gaussian functions. We have used star positions, measured with a precision of milli pixels, as a fitness function. We have explored dependence on under-sampling factor, given the camera’s two spatial resolutions, as well as on PSF variance across detectors. Scientifically, improved WFPC2 star positions would lead to stellar proper-motion studies of unprecedented precision.
13101-34
18 June 2024 • 11:10 - 11:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
MKIDs (Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors) are advanced superconducting detectors that can perform real-time photon detection by measuring the change in surface impedance caused by incoming photons in a simple LC circuit. These detectors have important advantages such as minimum readout noise, sensitivity in the UVOIR spectrum, and high time resolution. However, the generation of large amounts of data at the microsecond scale poses a significant challenge in the analysis of the raw data. In this study, machine learning methods trained using monochromatic light are proposed for real-time photon detection to solve the problem. Initial analyses using various machine learning algorithms yield results in detecting photons by processing resonator data and determining their arrival time and energy. In the future, we aim to use this approach with GPUs to process data from larger resonator arrays in real-time.
13101-35
18 June 2024 • 11:30 - 11:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
We present a machine learning method to assign stellar parameters (temperature, surface gravity, metallicity) to the photometric data of large photometric surveys such as SDSS and SKYMAPPER. The method makes use of our previous effort in homogenizing and recalibrating spectroscopic data from surveys like APOGEE, GALAH, or LAMOST into a single catalog, which is used to inform a neural network. We obtain spectroscopic-quality parameters for millions of stars that have only been observed photometrically. The typical uncertainties are of the order of 150K in temperature, 0.2 dex in surface gravity, and 0.1 dex in metallicity and the method does not break down at low metallicity unlike other similar efforts in the literature.
13101-36
18 June 2024 • 11:50 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Aiming at various unpredictable problems faced by large telescopes in extreme environments, an unanticipated fault diagnosis method based on Improved Grey Wolf Optimizer-Isolation Forest (IGWO-iForest) is proposed. Firstly, the feature selection algorithm of random forest is used to optimize the features of the original dataset; secondly, differential evolution and Lévy flight strategy are introduced to improve the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), and the parameters of the iForest fault diagnosis model are optimized by using IGWO. Finally, the performance of the model is verified by the data collected from the fault diagnosis and self-healing semi-physical simulation platform. The experimental results show that the proposed IGWO algorithm improves the search accuracy and the ability to avoid local optimal solutions compared with the basic GWO algorithm; the proposed unintended fault diagnosis algorithm for large telescopes has high accuracy and good performance.
Break
Lunch/Exhibition Break 12:10 - 13:20
Session 8:
Cloud Technologies/Adoption
18 June 2024 • 13:20 - 15:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
13101-37
18 June 2024 • 13:20 - 13:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
In order to address the challenges of the Rubin Science Platform, Rubin developed a kubernetes-based approach to service deployment with an in-house service configuration and support infrastructure called phalanx, based on ArgoCD. It became apparent that the challenges of running a service-oriented architecture in a modern observatory summit lent themselves equally well to this approach. In this talk we will describe how phalanx was adapted for use for telescope, instrument and sensor control services and the advantages of providing a unified service infrastructure for both control systems and data services.
13101-38
18 June 2024 • 13:40 - 14:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The amount of astronomical data that needs to be archived, calibrated, and processed continues to increase as telescopes and instruments advance. To solve these issues, we conducted a demonstration experiment using ALMA archived data to efficiently utilize a commercial cloud for data archive and data analysis.
In archiving, a hybrid configuration combining on-premise storage and cloud based short-term and long-term storages is cost-effective, considering the trends on the number of data downloads over time since the data was obtained.
In data analysis, information on processing time and resource usage, such as memory and CPU core, measured during the pipeline process of approximately 400 data sets was analyzed, and a model was created to estimate processing time and the required amount of resources from the observation parameters. Based on the model created, the amount of required resources is predicted based on observation parameters, and an instance with the necessary and sufficient resources for pipeline processing is launched on demand on the cloud. These pipeline processes could be completed in comparable processing times compared to on-premise ones.
13101-39
18 June 2024 • 14:00 - 14:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Datalab, the La Silla Paranal Observatory Platform for data analysis, is being migrated from Docker Swarm to Kubernetes to align with the integrated operations program's goals: Remote, Lean, Sustainable, and High performance.
The migration implied to move from an on-premises to a cloud-native infrastructure replicated locally into a Cloud-Edge, providing hybrid cloud containerized applications support, implementing DevOps practices and automation.
Using infrastructure as code and configuration management tools like Terraform and Ansible.
Building CI/CD pipelines in Gitlab to automatically deploy the proper infrastructure into to the hybrid cloud to hold Kubernetes clusters (Azure Kubernetes Cluster and Vanilla Kubernetes).
This approach allows the Observatory to enhance efficiency, reducing power consumption and improving scalability. Using Datalab as proof of concept but setting up the foundation to standardize these technologies in the organization.
This paper outlines the provisioning and deployment of the new hybrid cloud infrastructure, providing a concise overview of its architecture, operational impact, and benefits for the observatory.
13101-40
18 June 2024 • 14:20 - 14:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
In the rapidly evolving landscape of software development the adoption of containerisation has transformed the software supply chain. Containers encapsulate software components, ensuring consistency across multiple development, testing, and production environments. They foster agility and scalability by enabling microservices architecture and DevOps practices. The recent increase in cyberattacks targeting research institutes makes it critical to have a secure supply chain for containers and their orchestration. This paper delves into the integration of containers within the software supply chain, examining best practices and challenges in orchestration, security, and continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) and distribution. We focus on how containers are secured from build stage, verified and distributed securely and validated in production, while also exploring the implications for dependency management and obsolescence in modern cloud-native infrastructures. Our analysis provides insights into maximizing the benefits of containerization to streamline development pipelines and enhance software supply chain resilience.
13101-41
18 June 2024 • 14:40 - 15:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Grantecan (GTC) currently stands as the world's largest infrared optical telescope, notable for its considerable scale and intricate operational complexities. The telescope aligns with prevailing trends in industry, emphasizing smart factory strategies rooted in Industry 4.0, with a recent pivot towards human-centric human-machine interaction (Industry 5.0). The initial focus was identified in refining connectivity and defining the typology of sensors for optimizing operations. This led to the implementation of an industrial IoT middleware, grounded in FIWARE.The incorporation of smart sensors, leveraging links and protocols like LoRaWAN, Bluetooth, and Wifi, has been streamlined through MQTT connectivity while the integration of AI, edge computing, confined space control, flow management, electric vehicle charging, and photovoltaics represents a multifaceted technological augmentation. Looking ahead, the primary challenges lie in bolstering cybersecurity (OT), achieving seamless integration with Business Process Management (BPM), advancing data analytics capabilities, standardizing prescriptive maintenance protocols, and refining logistics processes.
Panel Discussion: Cyber-Security Round Table
18 June 2024 • 15:00 - 15:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Jorge Ibsen, Joint ALMA Observatory (Chile), Tom Donaldson, Space Telescope Science Institute (United States)
All publicly exposed research organizations receive cyber-attacks periodically and, given the collaborative nature of our mission, there are some commonalities on specific vulnerabilities. This session aims to enable an informal round table to discuss lessons learned and good practices towards cyber-security.
Break
Coffee Break 15:20 - 15:50
Session 9:
Observatory/Telescope Control II
18 June 2024 • 15:50 - 17:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
13101-42
18 June 2024 • 15:50 - 16:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The ELT Control System architecture first breakdown is between the Central Control System (CCS) and telescope subsystems Local Control Systems (LCS). The ELT CCS contain the Local Supervisors (LSV) that are responsible for interfacing to the different LCSs and implement the functionalities in the astronomical and user domains, which are translated into actions in the device’s domain of the respective LCS.
The LSVs follow a controller-estimator design pattern and implement a common interface and basic state machine which is extended depending on the subsystem characteristics. The status feedback is done as estimated state variables.
Tracking celestial objects is done on the Main Structure, the Dome and the Pre-Focal Station LSVs. Trajectory timestamped setpoints are computed and distributed ahead in time to the corresponding LCSs using deterministic channels.
This paper presents the basic design and current development status and prototyping results.
13101-43
18 June 2024 • 16:10 - 16:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Launched from Cape Canaveral on July 1st, the Euclid mission represents a significant endeavour in cosmological astrophysics, aiming to survey 15,000 square degrees of the extragalactic sky over six years. This paper presents an overview of the operational planning and commanding software and infrastructure that supports this mission. We detail the essential requirements and the design process, discussing the challenges faced and the solutions implemented. Additionally, the paper shares insights from the first few months of operation, reflecting on the practical experiences and learnings.
13101-44
18 June 2024 • 16:30 - 16:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Control System is in an advanced stage of integration and commissioning, in tandem with the observatory construction status. We recently conducted a study to replace the Data Distribution Service (DDS) message passing system with Kafka as a middleware technology with promising results. We are currently conducting the final implementation and verification stages of the process and anticipate switching to Kafka in a short timeframe.
13101-45
18 June 2024 • 16:50 - 17:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) is an international organisation that currently builds two multi-purpose radio telescope arrays. The SKA Low Frequency Telescope array (SKA Low), located in the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia, with the observing range 50 - 350 MHz, will consist of more than 131,072 log-periodic antennas organised as 512 stations; the maximum distance between two stations is 65 kilometres. The SKA Mid Frequency Telescope array (SKA Mid), located in the Karoo region, North Western Cape province, South Africa, with the observing range 350 MHz - 15 GHz, will comprise 197 offset-Gregorian dishes; the dishes are 15 metres in diameter, the maximum baseline is 150 kilometres. This paper provides an overview of the automated attribute alarm handling in Tango Controls devices of the SKA Control System, the current software design for the early stages of the observatory, its horizontally scalable deployment, its integration and the lessons learned when real users and engineers deploy and use software.
13101-46
18 June 2024 • 17:10 - 17:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Wide Area Linear Optical Polarimeters (WALOP) instruments were manufactured by IUCAA, India to be used by the PASIPHAE collaboration. The homonymous survey will cover a large sky area near the galactic poles, therefore these instruments were designed and manufactured to accommodate for a fast surveillance of the requested fields. They do that by 4-channel, 1 shot polarimetry, sponsoring no moving parts and dedicated calibration hardware. As the instruments are nearing commissioning, a software collection is necessary to facilitate the survey and the extensive hardware control needed. In this presentation, we aim to explain the different pieces of software we developed for the needs of PASIPHAE, with emphasis on the software that will control the instrument and its host telescope. This was developed in-house and consists of a full stack web application that can accept commands either from its own front-end or from custom made applications. Together with our survey planner and data analysis pipeline, they make for a fully automated scheduling, calibration, observing, and data processing system.
Wednesday Plenary Session
19 June 2024 • 08:30 - 10:00 Japan Standard Time | National Convention Hall, 1F
Join us for the Wednesday morning plenary talks.
Break
Coffee Break 10:00 - 10:30
Session 10:
Data Management, Processing and Pipelines II
19 June 2024 • 10:30 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Nuria P. F. Lorente, Australian Astronomical Optics, Macquarie Univ. (Australia), Tom Donaldson, Space Telescope Science Institute (United States)
13101-47
19 June 2024 • 10:30 - 10:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Wide-Field Infrared Transient Explorer (WINTER) is a new fully robotic infrared time-domain survey instrument at the Palomar Observatory, commissioned in June 2023. WINTER is performing a seeing-limited time domain survey of the infrared (IR) sky to detect, discover, and characterize astrophysical time-domain phenomena. As a dedicated observatory for real-time detection and rapid follow-up of infrared transient and variable targets, WINTER represents a new capability for multi-messenger astrophysics. We will describe the robotic software architecture of the WINTER Supervisor Program (WSP) which handles autonomous scheduling of both surveys and target-of-opportunity interrupts, as well as control and remote monitoring of the observatory, telescope, and cameras.
13101-48
19 June 2024 • 10:50 - 11:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
A real-time all-sky radio imaging system is under deployment on the Long Wavelength Array in Sevilleta, New Mexico. This system is designed to continuously monitor the sky to detect radio transient events below 100 MHz. The imager is powered by a highly optimized GPU implementation of a generic algorithm called the E-Field Parallel Imaging Correlator that can image the entire sky 25000 times per second at each frequency. The data is processed on-site, light curves are extracted into a distributed Postgres database, a 25 FPS video is live-streamed to multiple platforms, and images are integrated and archived to disk for further analysis. System operations and data management are fully automated using modern DevOps tools that allow remote control and monitoring of all aspects of the system. The imaging system is modularized and distributed and can be deployed on any radio array with minimal changes to the configuration.
13101-49
19 June 2024 • 11:10 - 11:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Array Control and Data Acquisition (ACADA) system is the central element for on-site Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) operations. ACADA controls, supervises, and handles the data generated by the telescopes and the auxiliary instruments. It will drive the efficient planning and execution of observations while handling the several Gb/s camera data generated by each CTAO telescope. The ACADA software is based on the Alma Common Software (ACS) framework, and written in C++, Java, Python, and Javascript. The first release of the ACADA software, ACADA Release 1, was finalized in July 2023, and integrated after a testing campaign with the first CTAO Large-sized Telescope finalized in October 2023. This contribution describes the design and status of the ACADA software system.
13101-50
19 June 2024 • 11:30 - 11:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
We have recently initiated a multi-institutional research program that will examine existing pipelines and catalog potential sources of variation in their resulting RV measurements. Through a series of EPRV community meetings we aim to establish community recommended, standardized formats for EPRV data products and to develop/distribute the tools necessary for direct comparisons of EPRV data between modern instruments. This program will lay the groundwork for a modular, open source, EPRV analysis toolbox that will be compatible with a wide variety of current and future instruments. Here we will provide a progress report on the program’s steps towards this community-endorsed data standard, and highlight lessons learned from the early years of operation across the NEID, KPF, EXPRES, CARMENES, HPF, and MAROON-X RV spectrographs.
13101-51
19 June 2024 • 11:50 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Introducing HERMES (HOP Enabled Rapid Message Exchange Service), an application which supports sharing and querying structured data containing targets, photometry, spectroscopy, astrometry, and more. As part of the SCiMMA (Scalable Cyberinfrastructure to support Multi-Messenger Astrophysics) project, Hermes aims to enforce some structure in the format of messages that can be sent over the SCiMMA kafka streams while providing a queryable database of those messages. We will discuss HERMES domain specific language (DSL) for sharing data including with external services such as NASA’s GCN circulars and the TNS (Transient Name Server), and integrations between HERMES and TOM (Target and Observation Management) Toolkit based systems.
Break
Lunch/Exhibition Break 12:10 - 13:20
Session 11:
Cyberinfrastructure
19 June 2024 • 13:20 - 15:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Jorge Ibsen, Joint ALMA Observatory (Chile), Tom Donaldson, Space Telescope Science Institute (United States)
13101-52
19 June 2024 • 13:20 - 13:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The forthcoming New Robotic Telescope (NRT), a collaboration between the UK and Spain, is poised to become the world’s largest and fastest autonomous observatory, and will be located on La Palma. It is tailored to be a premier 4m class follow-up facility for the imminent wave of time-domain and transient astrophysics. It exemplifies innovation with its use of serverless architectures and a unified DevOps methodology; integrating Docker and Kubernetes on both on-premisses and cloud infrastructure. This model not only aligns with modern web-based principles and distributed deployments but also ensures that astronomers and operations staff have unfettered access to manage their observations, data products and monitoring of the facility in a unified modern interface. Building on the Liverpool Telescope’s autonomous robotic legacy, the NRT merges the GranTeCan control system's framework with a novel robotic control system; facilitating the transition from human-operated to fully automated observatory functions. We describe the current status of the infrastructure for the NRT software stack, focussing on the current DevOps infrastructure and ongoing development ahead of construction.
13101-53
19 June 2024 • 13:40 - 14:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Radioastronomy is witnessing a rapid increase of volume in the data that are being collected by radio-interferometers like the LOFAR, MWA, ASKAP, MeerKAT, precursors of what will be delivered by the SKA, expected to generate hundreds of petabytes of data each year. This represents not only a major opportunity for scientists but also an outstanding technological challenge.
The existing software for data calibration and imaging needs to be redesigned and refactored to address such data challenge. To handle the growing data size and computational demands, scientists must be able to exploit cutting edge HPC architectures. The efficient utilization of heterogeneous systems, comprising CPUs, accelerators, high-speed networks and storage devices, is crucial.
We have investigated the adoption of modern HPC systems combining parallel and accelerated solutions specifically addressing the Imaging step.
Our developed software has been shown to effectively handle datasets and images of any size, compatible with the available hardware. It can efficiently scale up to thousands of cores or hundreds of GPUs, resulting in unprecedented performance and significantly reducing computing time.
13101-54
19 June 2024 • 14:00 - 14:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Initiated in 2008, the Canadian Advanced Network for Astronomical Research (CANFAR) has transformed into the advanced CANFAR Science Platform, a cloud-native framework for remote analysis of astronomical data. This innovative platform is designed for a diverse range of users, from large-scale groups like CHIME-FRB, to individual researchers in remote institutions. It offers intuitive interfaces such as notebooks, desktops, visualizers and IDEs, all accessible through a browser. These are supported by multi-tiered storage and Kubernetes orchestration. A comprehensive REST API facilitates seamless integration and automated batch processing.
CANFAR stands out by combining conventional desktop analysis with cutting-edge, browser-based interfaces and GPU-accelerated machine learning capabilities. This unique blend has made it a hub for a varied user community, establishing it as a unified platform for comprehensive astronomical data analysis. The upcoming presentation will explore CANFAR's strategic design decisions, its implementation, diverse user experiences, and the valuable lessons learned throughout its development.
13101-56
19 June 2024 • 14:40 - 15:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) program, led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), is developing nine 4-meter class, dual mirror Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) to detect gamma-ray radiation above 1 TeV at the Teide Observatory in the Canary Islands. To support this project, an on-site Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Infrastructure has been designed. The ICT infrastructure hosts the Computing System, which hosts the SCADA systems that control and monitor the ASTRI Mini-Array Telescopes mainly based on container architecture and Kubernetes orchestration. This paper discusses the virtual and containerized environment, utilizing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) alongside orchestration systems to simplify infrastructure and application management. This architecture allows easy configuration control of the SCADA system and streamlined deployment in production and testbed environments.
Panel Discussion: Gender Balance in the Conference
19 June 2024 • 15:00 - 15:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chair:
Nuria P. F. Lorente, Australian Astronomical Optics, Macquarie Univ. (Australia)
Despite notable advancements in diversity, inclusion, and equity across the broader astronomy community, gender diversity in astronomy instrumentation remains a challenge. This is reflected in a lower representation of female colleagues in abstract submissions for this conference, compared to other astronomy meetings focusing on astroinformatics, software, and data engineering. We would like to explore why this is and to identify opportunities for improvement. The session will start with an overview, with examples of successes and challenges from our community. The floor will then be open to discussion and ideas on how to improve the participation and engagement of highly qualified women in SPIE events, along with promoting inclusivity across all dimensions.
The session is open to anyone interested in the topic, so please join us! We are looking forward to hearing about your experiences and suggestions.
The session is open to anyone interested in the topic, so please join us! We are looking forward to hearing about your experiences and suggestions.
Break
Coffee Break 15:20 - 15:50
Session 12:
Data Engineering
19 June 2024 • 15:50 - 17:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
George Kosugi, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (Japan), Juan Carlos Guzman, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (Australia)
13101-57
19 June 2024 • 15:50 - 16:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Large sky surveys from dedicated survey telescopes allow astronomers to access large swathes of the optical and near-infrared sky at high spatial resolution. The increasingly large volume of multi-wavelength imaging and catalogue photometry data products they generate are a cumbersome data management burden for survey teams. Here we introduce a web application that effortlessly performs these tasks for the reprocessed imaging (>20TB) and catalogues (>100GB) of the VISTA Hemisphere Survey. The application is powered by the asynchronous architecture developed for Data Central's Data Aggregation Service that can query and receive several data streams simultaneously. Users can interactively display survey images and multiple catalogues together using Aladin Lite. With further science-oriented refinement we plan to release the application as part of the Data Central science platform.
13101-58
19 June 2024 • 16:10 - 16:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Operating a cutting-edge radio telescope like ALMA demands optimal utilization of every minute available in the sky. With an increasing allocation of observation hours to researchers each year, the imperative for continuous, seamless operations grows. ALMA relies on an array of computer systems functioning 24/7, catering to numerous concurrent users, generating approximately 50,000 logs per minute and a staggering 70 million logs per day.
Addressing the challenge of managing this voluminous data flow, Log Detector emerges as an in-house solution designed to automate the detection and reporting of known issues. By scrutinizing logs, this tool empowers users to define Finite State Machine (FSM) states and transitions. Subsequently, users can feed logs into this machine, inducing state transitions that signal potential problems or facilitate system monitoring tasks.
This article aims to spotlight the capabilities of Log Detector and its impact on operational efficiency. Additionally, it offers insights into the lessons learned during the development of in-house operational tools and outlines future development plans.
13101-59
19 June 2024 • 16:30 - 16:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
At Rubin Observatory, we recently consolidated our high-frequency telemetry harness, which captures engineering facility data, with our metrics analysis system into a single unified service named Sasquatch. We will generate a high volume of metrics and telemetry data during the 10-year survey. A crucial aspect of the architecture for capturing telemetry data is to ensure minimal data loss. This is achieved by deploying Kafka and InlfuxDB on Kubernetes. Sasquatch enables real-time data access at the US Data Facility through Kafka-based replication. Users interact with the data through Chronograf for visualization, create alerts with Kapacitor, and conduct ad hoc Python analysis in the Rubin Science Platform. Rubin has extensively employed these tools during the ongoing System Integration Testing and Commissioning phase. Additionally, we are actively exploring a cluster-based solution leveraging InfluxDB Enterprise to support historical data as Rubin Observatory transitions into operations.
13101-60
19 June 2024 • 16:50 - 17:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is a next-generation radio telescope that is being built in two locations in the Karoo region of South Africa and the Murchison region of Western Australia forming one Observatory run from a global headquarters based in the United Kingdom at Jodrell Bank.
At the heart of the SKA software, there will be a database that persists and replicates its metadata between these three sites that have different functions.
This paper will describe the main requirements for the SKA database, how this has been handled in the past at the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array in Chile, the lessons learned there from the 10 years of operations and what new options have appeared to handle the SKA, three site telescope needs.
The solution needs to be highly available, performant, cost effective and easy to implement and maintain in the long term.
13101-61
19 June 2024 • 17:10 - 17:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
We GPU ported with CUDA the Gaia Astrometric Verification Unit–Global Sphere Reconstruction (AVU–GSR) parallel solver. The code finds the astrometric parameters of ∼10^8 sources, by solving a linear system with the LSQR. The coefficient matrix is large (10–100 TB) and sparse. The CUDA code accelerates over the original MPI+OpenMP solver of ~14x on CINECA cluster Marconi100. We will migrate the code production to Leonardo, which has 4x GPU memory per node.
This speedup was obtained without computing the system covariances, whose total number is ~N_unk^2/2 and occupies ~1 EB with Nunk~5x10^8. This “Big Data” problem cannot be solved with standard methods: we define a two jobs, I/O-based pipeline, where one job writes the files and the second concurrent job reads them, iteratively computes the covariances, and deletes them. The covariances calculation doesn’t significantly slowdown the code until ~10^7 covariances.
Thursday Plenary Session
20 June 2024 • 08:30 - 10:00 Japan Standard Time | National Convention Hall, 1F
Join us for the Thursday morning plenary talks.
Break
Coffee Break 10:00 - 10:30
Session 13:
Data Management, Processing and Pipelines III
20 June 2024 • 10:30 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Nuria P. F. Lorente, Australian Astronomical Optics, Macquarie Univ. (Australia), Jeff Mader, W. M. Keck Observatory (United States)
13101-62
20 June 2024 • 10:30 - 10:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The United States Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP) is a joint initiative of the organizations building the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and NSF’s NOIRLab. The US-ELTP will provide US astronomers with access to observing and archival science with the GMT and TMT. A user services suite and integrated data management and science platform, the US-ELTP Program Platform (UPP), is being developed by NOIRLab and its scope, conceptual architecture, and development progress are described here. The UPP leverages community best practices, lessons from successful facilities like Gemini, Rubin, andDKIST, and is guided by inclusive and collaborative design principles to broaden access to the GMT and TMT. The UPP will support the creation of proposal and observing programs, scheduling and observation execution, data archival and automated data reduction, and exploratory data analysis. The system, its support, extensive documentation, and ample training will be guided by regular community surveys and interviews with a diverse range of community members, and, eventually, through usability testing based on prototypes and mockups.
13101-63
20 June 2024 • 10:50 - 11:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Aspera is a UV SmallSat Mission in development with the goal to detect and map warm-hot gas in the circumgalactic medium of nearby galaxies. To that goal, Aspera will obtain observations at one or more spatial fields around each target galaxy, employing two long-slit spectrographs feeding one micro-channel plate detector. The aim of Aspera’s data reduction pipeline is to reconstruct a calibrated 3D data cube from the list of raw photon events for each target. In this contribution, we will outline a flowchart for the science data reduction pipeline and discuss individual steps to be applied to the data during the processing. We will further describe the image cube reconstruction process that resamples the spatially irregularly sampled observations onto a regularly gridded image cube. Finally, we will present our planned data products and discuss how simulations of the Aspera data cubes are being used to develop the pipeline.
13101-64
20 June 2024 • 11:10 - 11:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
Stellar motions are critical for understanding our Galaxy's shape, but Gaia, ESA's astrometric satellite, cannot explore the heavily obscured central region. In contrast, JASMINE, an ISAS/JAXA astrometry and photometry satellite mission, aims to precisely measure star motions in the Galactic center using infrared astrometry. However, a comprehensive assessment of the mission viability is required. To investigate the JASMINE mission concept, we conducted a practice of plate analysis, where simulated measurements based on a mock observation schedule were mapped to the ICRS frame. Then, we compared the estimated stellar positions with ground truth. This plate analysis is a complex optimization problem involving approximately 300,000 measurements and 20,000 parameters. To enhance data analysis efficiency, we employed Stochastic Variational Inference powered by jax and numpyro. We completed the plate analysis, providing partial validation of the mission concept, although some adverse effects are yet to be incorporated.
13101-65
20 June 2024 • 11:30 - 11:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) is a major next-generation instrument in ground-based gamma-ray astronomy that will play a pivotal role in the study of transient phenomena in the GeV-TeV range. The Transients Handler is the component within the Array Control and Data Acquisition (ACADA) system that enables CTAO to respond swiftly to alerts about transient events with automatically scheduled observations. The Transients Handler filters thousands of events per night for potential targets of scientific interest and determines and schedules optimal observation strategies within five seconds of receiving an alert. Recently, in October 2023, the first implementation of the Transients Handler was successfully tested during the integration of ACADA with the first CTAO Large-sized Telescope (LST-1). In this contribution, we will present the design of the Transients Handler in detail and preview updates that will be introduced in the next implementation.
13101-66
20 June 2024 • 11:50 - 12:10 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
We present a real-time pipeline for detecting Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), which performs a continuous, blind search for these elusive radio signals. Our pipeline achieves a rough detection, with the aim of selectively storing the raw time-series data for recording signal segments that potentially include FRBs. This approach significantly reduces the storage capacity required for conducting FRB surveys at low frequency. A prototype was tested on the NenuFAR pathfinder for SKA. This pipeline utilises a novel method of data acquisition through Direct Memory Access from the network to the GPU, thereby eliminating the involvement of the CPU in critical operations. Additionally, it utilizes an innovative approach termed the Streaming Dispersion Measure Transform for incoherent dedispersion, which eliminates overlap and reduces memory footprint. Our study provides an in-depth analysis of the performance of every component involved in the pipeline, and we demonstrate how our implementations could be upscaled to handle heavy workloads, such as for the SKA.
Break
Lunch/Exhibition Break 12:10 - 13:20
Session 14:
Project Management/Software Engineering
20 June 2024 • 13:20 - 15:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Session Chairs:
Juan Carlos Guzman, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (Australia), Valentina Alberti, INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste (Italy)
13101-67
20 June 2024 • 13:20 - 13:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The SKA Organisation adopted an agile development approach for its software construction, addressing complexity and uncertainties. They chose the Scaled Agile Framework® and NEC4® framework for contracts, complemented by the Vested® methodology for collaborative relationships. After two years of construction, the approach has proven successful, surpassing resource estimates and maintaining positive developer satisfaction. Key outcomes include competitive rates, high trust levels, supplier engagement in governance, and on-time, on-budget development without impacting the critical path. The organization plans to share lessons learned, emphasizing the applicability of these practices to future large-scale scientific software programs.
13101-68
20 June 2024 • 13:40 - 14:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
The GMTO Software and Controls team is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining the GMT Observatory Control System (OCS) and Global Interlock and Safety System (GISS). There are many challenges that need to be overcome in the process, some universal and some unique to the GMT project. From effective collaboration in a distributed team, hiring top talent, integrating Agile software methodologies with stage-gate project development, and handling resource limitations – we discuss how we tackle the technical, managerial, resource and communications challenges in a quest to deliver high-quality software for the project.
13101-69
20 June 2024 • 14:00 - 14:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
Show Abstract +
We reports challenges in maintaining and improving the VLKB, its current status and future perspectives. As a dedicated infrastructure to enable research in Milky-Way astrophysics, its custom interfaces were designed keeping in mind the evolving Virtual Observatory (VO) ecosystem standards. Interoperability was slowly brought in, depending on available project funding used for maintenance and updates. Current adopted standards see: ObsCore table for datasets metadata, TAP service for catalogues, SODA implementation, OAuth/OIDC. Other standards are still missing and needed to help the VLKB and its dedicated client (ViaLactea Visual Analytics) to be more general and easier to maintain.
13101-70
20 June 2024 • 14:20 - 14:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
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The Observatory Science Operations (OSO) subsystem of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) consists of a range of complex tools which will be used to propose, design, schedule and execute observations. Bridging the gap between the science and telescope domains is the key responsibility of OSO, requiring considerations of usability, performance, availability and accessibility, amongst others. This paper describes the state of the observatory software as we approach construction milestones, how the applications meet these requirements using a modern technology architecture, and challenges so far.
13101-71
20 June 2024 • 14:40 - 15:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
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This presentation shows the software process and challenges for developing and integrating the Pyramidal Wavefront Sensor, the Holographic Dispersed Fringe Sensor, and the High Contrast Adaptive Optics Testbed prototypes using the GMT software development kit. This prototype was done as a collaboration between the GMT observatory, Arcetri-INAF, and the University of Arizona. We show how the responsibilities were handed over between the partners, how introducing the GMT frameworks and development process helped streamline the development process, and the lessons learned that come with it.
13101-72
20 June 2024 • 15:00 - 15:20 Japan Standard Time | Room G314, North - 3F
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Professional software engineering techniques have yet to consistently find their way into research software engineering. To address this problem, we develop the new LOFAR2 proposal tool in short iterations where software engineers strive for technical excellence to build robust and maintainable software. Simultaneously, we embed stakeholders with an interest in academic concerns in this process to manage these concerns appropriately. Intensified collaboration between software engineers and relevant stakeholders creates more maintainable, durable, and reusable research software. This presentation discusses the challenges we encounter and practical ways of working that help bridge the gap between academia and software engineering.
Session PS1:
Posters I - Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
13101-73
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Despite Python being the preferred programming language of choice for most astronomers, building or extending data reduction pipelines in the language can be problematic. We have created an extensible pipeline development framework that leverages the Python bindings for the ESO Common Pipeline Library (PyCPL) toolkit. Pipeline recipes can be defined using existing ESO pipeline recipes or new Python recipes. Users can easily build their own pipeline workflows for execution by the PyCPL companion package PyEsorex. The ability to define Python recipes offers a powerful means to extend existing ESO pipelines or develop entirely new pipelines. An overview of the framework is presented along with an illustrative MUSE pipeline workflow.
13101-74
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Thermal control of the MMT Observatory primary mirror (M1) has been optimized with the overall objective of reducing M1 thermal anomalies and mirror seeing while enhancing overall imaging quality. These refinements include: 1) Use of temperatures from outside, chamber, M1 glass, and U.S. National Weather Service sources for thermal control, 2) Expansion of data monitoring from M1 thermal sensors, 3) Integration of multiple feedback-based PID (proportional-integral-derivative) controllers, and 4) Extensive data analysis of M1 thermal anomalies, temperatures from diverse sources, and PID controller parameters. Thermal conditions in and around the telescope enclosure have been investigated from logged thermal data and with a handheld infrared (IR) camera survey. This work has led to recommendations for operational changes that aim to improve thermal conditions for the M1 mirror and telescope chamber, particularly during the transition from daytime to nighttime activities. Results from this work are applicable to astronomical observatories around the world.
13101-75
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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This research analyzes historical data from the ASTRI-Horn, a Cherenkov telescope at the Astrophysical Observatory of Catania (Serra La Nave, Mt. Etna). Data from a multitude of sensors, distributed across the telescope, were studied. These sensors record various parameters, including currents, voltages, phases, positions, and temperatures, from different telescope components such as motors and encoders, as well as environmental conditions like temperature and humidity. Seven years of operational data have been analyzed to identify precursors indicative of component degradation. The aim is to discern unique data patterns or "signatures" corresponding with periods of component damage or replacement. These identified signatures will be instrumental in the development of a Predictive Maintenance (PdM) model, which will aim to foresee the standard operational patterns, issuing alerts for any detected anomalies or deviations, thereby facilitating early anomaly detection and resolution. PdM is an advanced maintenance strategy that uses data to help predict when parts might fail aiming to reduce unexpected costs, improving the overall efficiency and reliability of the telescope.
13101-77
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The VLT at Paranal Observatory has been in operation for over two decades, and in the near future, the ELT will be managed by the same operational team. Maintaining operational efficiency and minimizing downtime with the same team is crucial. Previous research has shown that software logs effectively capture the telescopes' behavior, providing valuable operational insights. We've integrated various log analysis techniques, drawing from academic literature and industry best practices, into the Paranal Observatory's operations. These techniques allow engineers to monitor system health, analyze error sequences, detect anomalies, and reconstruct processes. Additionally, we've utilized generative artificial intelligence, specifically transformer-based models, to infer observation behavior and predict execution failures. The Paranal Datalab, a Docker-based data warehouse storing years of historical operational data, serves as our backend. In this work, we provide technical details and outline the key challenges and opportunities in adopting this discipline within an astronomy facility.
13101-78
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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BlueMUSE is a blue-optimised, medium spectral resolution, panoramic integral field spectrograph under development for the Very Large Telescope (VLT). We demonstrate and discuss an early End-To-End simulation software for final BlueMUSE datacube products. Early access to such simulations is key to a number of aspects already in the development stage of a new major instrument. We outline the software design choices, including lessons learned from the MUSE instrument in operation at the VLT since 2014. The current simulation software package is utilized to evaluate some of the technical specifications of BlueMUSE as well as giving assistance in the assessment of certain trade offs regarding instrument capabilities, e.g., spatial and spectral resolution and sampling. By providing simulations of the end-user product including realistic environmental conditions such as sky contamination and seeing, 'BlueSi' can be used to devise and prepare the science of the instrument by individual research teams.
13101-79
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Modern astronomical telescopes often rely on control systems for observations. Many factors may affect the development of control systems, such as the differences in the development phases of devices, the robustness of devices. A simulation framework which mocks the component of each device is needed to speed up the development of control system, facilitating behavior-level simulation to support the upper layer development. Presently, many industry-standard simulation systems are predominantly based on actual hardware systems, which necessitate the development of independent hardware logic, such as the simulator of LSST. We have designed the Rsimu framework. This framework is built upon the RACS2 and is highly proficient in behavior simulation of devices. Rsimu's behavior is entirely configurable, and the properties of different components can be dynamically defined by pluggable configuration files. A shared data-plane is provided for components to synchronize their status, therefore helps developers to separate the behavior model of components apart. A series of designs, including pull-update, state-machine etc are provided to help users to establish the simulation system.
13101-80
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The first generation of instruments installed at the Extremely Large Telescope will include METIS, Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph. We present the algorithms and data structures that comprise the integral field unit (IFU) part of the data reduction pipeline. The described software package covers the entire process of correcting the instrumental effects, wavelength and flux calibration, correction of telluric contamination, spectral cube reconstruction and finally the algorithms for stacking and dithering of multiple exposures taken at different times, field orientations or shifts.
13101-81
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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In the low-frequency Square Kilometre Array, faults in dipole antenna bandpasses must be detected to exclude faulty antennas from observations. Using a random forest on data from the Aperture Array Verification System 2, bandpasses can be classified as faulty or not with an accuracy of ~98%. Applying this to data from Aperture Array Verification System 3, all faulty antenna bandpasses were detected using the model. This model is encapsulated in its own TANGO device for ease of reconfiguration and scalability.
13101-82
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) is deploying a cutting-edge ground-based instrument for gamma-ray astronomy in both the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres, featuring telescopes of various sizes to cover different energy ranges. This contribution focuses on the Array Control and Data Acquisition (ACADA) software, a pivotal element for optimizing CTAO operations. ACADA comprises software for central control, the short-term scheduler, monitoring systems, and data handling at rates of GB/s. Consequently, complex software, is requiring expertise in multiple areas, including control, data acquisition, analysis, scheduling, and configuration. To ensure proper development and integration, ACADA has been broken into subsystems, with geographically distributed teams who provide software under version control through GitLab. This contribution outlines our strategy for managing multiple software versions aligned with the CTAO development plan, focusing on bug fixes and controlled feature additions.
13101-83
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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MORFEO (Multi-conjugate adaptive Optics Relay For ELT Observations) is a new instrument being built for the ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). The project is in the final design phase and it is expected to be commissioned in 2030. The instrument control software of MORFEO will be based on the new ESO ELT software framework, which is still under development, and a key activity during the control software implementation is the Continuous Integration (CI) of the code. Continuous integration is the practice of automating the integration of code changes from multiple contributors into a single software project. We present the current CI workflow that ensures that both the software control team and the software quality assurance team can work synchronously, effectively and independently. We also present the options we considered and the reasons that led us to choose this workflow.
13101-84
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) is the future of ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, operating in the era of multi-messenger astronomy. With two arrays housing over 118 Cherenkov telescopes in La Palma, Spain, and Paranal, Chile, CTAO combines diverse telescope designs and instruments to study transient phenomena in the GeV-TeV range. To maximize scientific impact, CTAO notifies the community about transients and variable phenomena, including gamma-ray bursts, active galactic nuclei, and more.
The Array Control and Data Acquisition (ACADA) system is crucial for executing observations and managing scientific data acquisition. The Science Alert Generation (SAG) within ACADA uses pipelines for real-time data reconstruction, quality monitoring, and scientific analysis to detect candidate transients.
SAG analyses data on various time scales and must issue candidate science alerts within 20 seconds, meeting half of the CTAO’s sensitivity. Achieving this involves managing trigger rates of tens of kHz from the telescope arrays. The authors introduce the ACADA-SAG system’s architecture, highlighting its role in facilitating transient searches within the CTAO.
13101-85
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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This paper describes the upgrade of EMIR (to EMIR+) which incorporates a new Teledyne H2RG infrared detector, using the SIDECAR integrated controller and a Markury Scientific MACIE interface card over IP communication. A detailed description of the Data Acquisition System (DAS), integrated into the GTC Control System (GCS) software, is given. It configures the URG or FS acquisition modes, starts the acquisition process, capture the data coming from the H2RG unit, stores the FITS data and propagate the images to produce astronomical files. We also developed a Python-based MACIE Controller Simulator to test and debug the DAS, which works as a real MACIE interface, responding to all petitions and generating test images to feed the DAS or other control programs.
13101-86
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Cloud computing offers unparalleled flexibility, a constantly increasing set of “Infrastructure As A Service’’ capabilities, resource elasticity and security isolation. One of the most significant barriers in astronomy to wholesale adoption of cloud infrastructures is the cost for hot storage of large datasets - particularly for Rubin, a Big Data project sized at 0.5 Exabytes (500 Petabytes) over the duration of its 10-year mission. We are planning to reconcile this with a “hybrid” model where user-facing services are deployed on Google Cloud with the majority of data holdings residing in our on-premises Data Facility at SLAC. We discuss the opportunities, risks, and technical challenges of this approach.
13101-87
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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With the latest advances at controlling Optical Path Differences at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), vibrations at the 8 meter Unit Telescopes (UT) are deemed as detrimental for observation as light pollution. In the frame of the GRAVITY+ project, the vibration control system Manhattan II (MNII) is being expanded and upgraded to better deal with the effects of vibrations but this is not enough: better troubleshooting tools and automatic Anomaly Detection (AD) systems are needed to monitor and timely respond to changes in the vibration signature of the UTs among other phenomena. This work focuses on the development of a machine learning AD system on MNII’s vibration data, the different methods and models used, the infrastructure and data pipeline and the future envisioned production system.
13101-88
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) is a 50m-diameter single dish millimeter-wave radio telescope located in Mexico, built by the country of Mexico and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The National Science Foundation Mid-Scale Innovations Program (MSIP) is now supporting access to the LMT for any astronomer located at a US institution with a share of total 15% of the scientific observation time. The LMT cyber-infrastructure is being innovated to accommodate the new science operation workflow. We developed and deployed the LMT data archive, fully integrating the data pipeline, data model, and data management workflow of most LMT instruments. For the LMT data archive, we use our own installation of the Dataverse software as the backend, with a custom-built frontend to provide a user friendly search interface for discovering data products. The data model and data management workflow are developed along with the commissioning (hardware and/or software) of the instrument specific pipelines. The software package dvpipe is developed to package the data products from the instrument specific pipelines as science-ready data products and put them into the LMT data archive.
13101-89
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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FORS2 is a multi-mode optical spectrograph mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). To keep it operational for at least the next 15 years, ESO and INAF-OATs launched the FORS upgrade project (FORS-Up). The twin spectrograph FORS1 is now undergoing a complete refurbishment at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, and will replace FORS2 at the VLT once the upgrade is finished.
The control software for FORS is being reimplemented within the new ELT (Extremely Large Telescope) software framework: new GUIs have been designed, new standard procedures have been developed, and the upgraded hardware components have been configured.
The upgrade will ensure the continued operation of the instrument and provides a testbed for the new ELT software framework, since this will be the first instrument to operate under it.
13101-90
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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We present progress on the SOXS instrument scheduler at ESO-NTT 3.58-m telescope in La Silla, Chile. SOXS, a single-object spectroscopic facility, spans 350-2000 nm with R≈4500, focusing on UV-visible and near-infrared follow-up observations of astrophysical transients. The scheduler addresses diverse scientific objectives, coping with specific observation planning requirements. Notably, SOXS is exclusively operated by La Silla staff, challenging the scheduler to be fully automated, interacting with databases and the La Silla Weather API. It provides ordered optimal targets and backups in changing conditions, requiring rapid-response capabilities. The scheduler's architecture, featuring Docker Containers, API Gateway, and Python-based Flask frameworks, is ready for on-site testing during the Commissioning phase.
13101-91
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Instrument Control Software of SOXS (Son Of X-Shooter), the forthcoming spectrograph for the ESO New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory, has reached a mature state of development and is approaching the crucial Preliminary Acceptance in Europe phase.
Now that all the subsystems have been integrated in the laboratories of the Padova Astronomical Observatory, the team operates for testing purposes with the whole instrument at both engineering and scientific level. These activities foresee a set of software challenges that will be discussed in this contribution.
In particular, we focus on the Active Flexure Compensation system which controls two separate piezo tip-tilt devices, one for the visible channel and one for the infrared one; on the target acquisition strategy, and on the co-rotator system.
13101-92
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Automated analysis of quasar spectra is complex, involving understanding the phenomena producing spectral features, controlling systematic errors, and scaling up from analysing individual features to entire spectra. The needs of next-generation facilities, like the ESO ELT, impose strict constraints on data analysis. Astrocook, designed with these challenges in mind, has evolved into a versatile suite of “recipes” to "bake” quasar spectra with complex analysis workflows. It perform tasks from simple arithmetic to complex Voigt-profile modeling. Astrocook has been applied to a diverse range of projects with differing requirements, shaping its evolution toward spectral fidelity. This presentation delves into three challenging test cases, exploring their technical implications, code improvements, and the potential impact on the future of quasar spectral analysis over the next decade.
13101-93
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) is the next generation ground-based observatory for gamma-ray astronomy at very-high energies. CTAO will consist of two arrays, one array in the Northern and the other in the Southern hemisphere, containing telescopes of different types, for covering different energy domains. The Array Control and Data Acquisition (ACADA) system provides the means to execute observations and to handle the acquisition of scientific data in CTAO. The Resource Manager (RM) and Central Control (CC) subsystems are core components of the ACADA system. The RM subsystem provides infrastructure services concerning the administration of various resources to all ACADA subsystems. The CC subsystem implements the execution of observations after receiving them from the scheduler subsystem. This contribution provides a summary of the main design features, current status and future implementation plans for the ACADA RM and CC subsystems.
13101-94
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Increasingly complex software requires novel ways to deploy, run, and monitor software. With the shift to containerization, software orchestrators and virtual networking allow us to define infrastructure in code. This reduces administration overhead and allows in-depth monitoring of our system. Over 50 independent stations within LOFAR2 spread across Europe stream large amounts of data from the antennas towards our archives. This makes managing deployments, communicating between the many components, and monitoring centrally while keeping independence challenging.
How does ASTRON ensure an instrument that is highly efficient in observing the skies while still being able to update to accommodate new science cases? This presentation showcases how we have organized our telescope software infrastructure and the tools and technologies that we use to better focus on our science.
13101-95
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Radio-frequency interference (RFI) raises a challenging issue confronted by radio astronomy. This challenge is particularly pregnant when recording extremely faint signals such as those associated with pulsar observations. To tackle this problem, current solutions consist in performing RFI flagging and discarding RFI-corrupted data before any subsequent data processing, which unavoidably leads to a loss of information. Alternatively, we propose to formulate RFI mitigation as a joint detection and restoration task to allow parts of the dynamic spectrum affected by RFI to be not only identified but also recovered. The proposed deep neural network is trained on a large data sets generated within a simulation framework specifically designed according to physically-inspired and statistical models of the pulsar signals and of the RFIs. Through extensive numerical experiments, the proposed approach is shown to reach competitive performance in terms of RFI detection and dynamic spectrum restoration.
13101-96
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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MAVIS is the new MCAO Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph for ESO’s Very Large Telescope. In this paper we focus on the interface between the instrument control system software (ICSS) and the soft Real-Time Computer (sRTC). ICSS will be based on the new ESO ELT software framework, which is still under development; sRTC will be based on the new ESO RTC Toolkit, also under development. We present the first design of the common interface between ICSS and sRTC, focusing mainly on the communication processes (commands and data) and which are the most critical points we had to face.
13101-97
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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This paper present the current state of the refurbishment of the multi-mode optical instrument FORS (FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph) for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) UT1 Cassegrain focus. The upgrade, termed FORS-Up (FORS-Upgrade), carried on by ESO and INAF-OATs, comprises, beside replacement of some optical components, the replacement of all the motors, the development of a new calibration unit, the adoption of a new detector, and the design of a control electronics based on the new ELT standards.
This document will describe the PLC software implementation and the electronics integration with the new mechanics carried out at the laboratories of the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste.
13101-98
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The primary mirror of the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) is composed of 36 hexagonal segments. As the world's largest optical-infrared telescope, it utilizes a stabilization system designed to simulate a monolithic mirror. The telescope's current control system, which relies on now-obsolete real-time technology, is facing the discontinuation of critical components. The primary objective of this project is to validate a new real-time platform based on a specialized version of Linux with enhanced real-time features.
13101-99
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Managing computing infrastructure across the globe is an existential requirement for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) telescope, demanding simple, maintainable, and efficient approaches to infrastructure management. In this paper, we delve into the strategies adopted at the SKAO to streamline the creation and management of compute and network resources across diverse environments, ranging from commercial cloud providers to on-premises datacentres, combining well-established industry-standard tools like Terraform, Ansible, Vault and novels such as ClusterAPI. We will explore the challenges and solutions developed to maintain a resilient and scalable infrastructure and how support the SKAO's ambitious goals and development activities.
13101-121
18 June 2024 • 19:00 - 20:30 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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pyobs is a Python-based, open source framework for operating robotic telescopes. It defines interfaces and the means of communication for so-called modules, which are single pyobs processes handling a single task, like controlling a piece of hardware or performing some kind of operation. While pyobs ships with many ready-to-use modules (several camera types, auto-focus, acquisition & guiding, etc), it is easily extendable to support new hardware and procedures due to its implementation in Python. A graphical user interface for remote operations is provided as well as a full robotic mode based on Las Cumbres Observatory's observation control system -- while other backends can be added as easily. We are currently running pyobs on four telescope, ranging from 50cm to 1.2m, including a solar telescope. The framework is published under a free license and uses open standards wherever possible.
13101-100
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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During ongoing maintenance and development of software used to control the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), the detection of memory leaks in legacy and newly developed software is of the utmost importance. This paper describes investigations into the development and use of additional test support software using Machine Learning (ML) to determine the presence of memory leaks. The software is implemented to integrate within existing pytest code and is designed to be executed alongside software module nightly tests as part of Continuous Integration (CI) testing. The work’s prime objective is to highlight memory suspicious processes so that memory leaks can be found and fixed before software deployment at the observatory.
13101-101
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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This paper presents a methodology to automate and accelerate the PLATO Payload boot SW (BSW) testing procedures by presenting a set of pre-programmed TCL scripts with different verification targets, satisfying the BSW requirements. These scripts are conceived in order to run an autonomous regression testing while verifying the BSW core functionalities, so that in case of an additional BSW verification is needed, a set of scripts will be available for obtaining an automatic quick health-statement. The present method was proven by carrying out the pre-programmed functional and performance tests on the different PLATO's BSW versions installed on the ICU development models. The tests performed on these models have proven their effectiveness during the BSW testing process, since the testing time has been greatly reduced and the test results can be archived to maintain a useful record that contemporaneously with the dedicated TCL scripts may assist in future verification of the flight BSW version.
13101-102
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Gamma-ray bursts are some of the most energetic events in the Universe. For a few seconds they become the brightest object in the gamma-ray sky. This very short emission is followed by a synchrotron afterglow that is also very luminous at all wavelengths, but that rapidly fades following a power-law decay. Due to this, specific observation techniques, such as robotic or target of opportunity observations are required. Furthermore, observations from all around the globe and at all frequencies are needed to produce complete datasets, making them very difficult to properly study.
With GRBSpec and GRBPhot we have created centralized facilities to gather and enable public access to data from heterogeneous sources of observations. GRBBase will be the next step, in which we will make all the data, together with high-energy information available in a single place. Access will not only allow to view and download data but also to perform online analysis and construct data samples that allow researchers to address specific problems. Here we will present the project and give an overview of its potential as well as some first results.
13101-103
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) is Europe’s largest radio telescope, originally designed, built and operated by ASTRON. The monitor and control software system of each observation station is based on the open-source TANGO-Controls framework, which manages the device architecture and the various functionalities of the station, including its states and transitions.
Since each hardware device is implemented as a software module, the startup of the station and its states transitions until a full operative state implies a non trivial interaction and communication among the different device classes. The proposed solution defines a specific hierarchical structure whereas each one of the device represents a node, considering also that the hierarchy can be different according to the power sequence and the control sequence.
In order to adhere to the TANGO architecture, the operations are mainly developed exploiting device attributes and properties, such that a potentially complex process is handled in a very straightforward and maintainable way.
The software architecture has been already deployed and successfully tested on the LOFAR2 Test Station (L2TS) located in the Netherlands.
13101-104
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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One of the main goals of the JASMINE astro-photometric satellite is to measure precise proper motions and parallaxes for hundreds of thousands of stars in the direction of the Galactic centre. To observe these distant and dimmed stars at the required level of precision, we need to pioneer in the use of infrared astrometric detectors from space, and thus extensive testing is needed to understand the instrument and model all possible biases accurately. Here we present the largest mock catalogue of the Galactic centre in the near infrared, resulting from the smart combination of observed real stars and kinematic models of the Milky Way. This catalogue, as well as the methods used to create it, will be crucial for any future survey of this region like JASMINE, ROMAN, or even Gaia NIR.
13101-105
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The expansion of scientific, economic, and military activity in space has driven concomitant growth in the diversity, dynamism, and size of the anthropogenic space object population. The safety of spacecraft operations depends on the detection and monitoring of transient events among this population, such as satellite maneuvers, proximity operations, and component articulation, as well as the routine maintenance of high-accuracy ephemerides. Optical sensors are effective tools for this task when applied in large numbers. However, responsiveness to transient events necessitates geographic diversity and cost-effectiveness motivates heterogeneity of aperture and instrumentation. Orchestrating a globally distributed, diverse collection of sensors to satisfy space object tracking objectives remains an open challenge. In this work, we adopt the open-source MACHINA agentic software framework to embody an autonomous space domain awareness agent that addresses this challenge.
13101-106
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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We introduce a novel software called TCSpy designed to control multiple telescopes through the network-based protocol (Alpyca). The primary objectives of TCSpy include centralized control of telescope arrays, support for diverse observation modes with multiple telescopes and a swift response to the follow-up observations of astronomical transients. For the practical application of TCSpy, we implement TCSpy within the 7 Dimensional Telescope (7DT). The main scientific goals of 7DT encompass detecting the optical counterparts of gravitational wave sources and identifying kilonovae. In addition to these goals, 7DT embarks on the 7 Dimensional Survey (7DS), acquiring time-series spectroscopy across the entire southern hemisphere sky. Through the integration of TCSpy, 7DT achieves these scientific goals with three observation modes with the rapid follow-up capabilities. 1. Spectroscopic mode: synchronizes all telescopes precisely to target the same coordinate with different medium band filters, 2. Deep mode: controls all telescopes to observe the same coordinate, but with same filter. 3. Search mode: all telescopes operate separately to scan wide regions for capturing transients.
13101-108
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Intelligent Observatory (IO) is a project of the South African Astronomical Observatory which aims to improve the efficiency of observing, optimise the use of the observatory’s resources and allow rapid follow-up of targets of interest.
We have developed software to enable our telescopes and instruments to be programmatically controlled, and have used this to develop remotely operable web interfaces for each of these.
We are now focussed on enabling robotic operation. To this end we have adopted the Las Cumbres Observatory’s Observatory Control System (OCS). This allows users to submit observing requests, and the OCS scheduler produces a schedule of observations for each telescope. We have developed software to retrieve the latest schedule, configure the telescope and instruments accordingly, and take the required exposures.
In full robotic mode, it is important that the telescopes and instruments be operated only when safe to do so. We have developed watchdog software, using the same interfaces, to monitor the weather and shut down telescopes and instruments if the weather turns bad.
13101-109
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The ERIS data reduction pipeline, as part of the ESO-VLT Data Flow
System, provide recipes for the reduction of ERIS
data, the support of Operations, and a monitoring of instrument health
and data quality.
The pipeline generates science-ready data products that are ingested into the
ESO archive.
The Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) is an
instrument that both extends and enhances the fundamental diffraction-limited
imaging and spectroscopic capabilities of the VLT.
The observational modes ERIS provides are integral field spectroscopy
at 1-2.5 um, done with ERIS-SPIFFIER, imaging at 1-5 um with several
options for high-contrast imaging, and long-slit spectroscopy at 3-4
um, done with ERIS-NIX and ERIS-LSS, respectively.
The pipeline recipes can be executed either with EsoRex at the command-line
level, through the ESOReflex graphical interface, or using the
new ESO Data Processing System.
This article will present the main functionalities of the ERIS-NIX and
ERIS-SPIFFIER pipelines.
13101-110
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
Imaging in the near-infrared is affected by a background signal which plays an important role in limiting the instrument performances. Several extremely faint sources can therefore remain hidden under the noise, or else their weak characteristic peaks could be mistaken as residual noise peaks.
We present here a study aimed to identify below-the-noise (S/N<1) sources in near-infrared astronomical images exploiting a Deep Learning algorithm based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN).
We used a dataset of images acquired with the SWIRCAM near-infrared camera of the AZT24 telescope in Campo Imperatore observatory. Each image from a first subset has been compared with the corresponding, photometrically deeper image from the 2MASS catalogue, producing a set of positions of the sources in 2MASS. The SWIRCAM images have then been labelled with both the S/N>1 sources and the other, undetectable sources (S/N<1), and have been used as input to a CNN, training it with the aim of identifying a pattern in the background around the missed astronomical sources.
The algorithm can represent a way to push the limiting magnitude of a telescope beyond the classical paradigm based on the S/N only.
13101-111
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
Components in the SKA telescope control system are implemented using the TANGO controls framework. A shared repository is used to ensure consistency and standards in the various components across the subsystems. This repository provides boilerplate code that guides the creation of custom implementations for TANGO device servers. The discussion highlights the design behind the shared repository and its role in maintaining uniformity and efficiency in the SKA telescope control system.
13101-112
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
EtherCAT motion control architecture has become more and more popular these years. Its realization is based on the real-time operating system(RTOS), which utilizes one or more CPU cores of multi-core CPU computers to do the real-time operation and not interfere with the general-purpose operating system. Compared with the traditional DSP/FPGA motion controller-based motion control system, RTOS-based EtherCAT has many advantages, including much less wiring, much easier programming, easier maintenance, more flexibility, and so forth.
I have tested several EtherCAT motion control systems based on different RTOS, including TenAsys INtime, IntervalZero RTX, and Acontis RTOS32Win. All EtherCAT masters present similar performance and using methods. I have used an RTX-based EtherCAT motion controller in 2 real projects, which makes my life much easier.
13101-113
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
This paper describe the development of the low-level software for the control of six telescopes forming part of the ASTRI project (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) led by INAF (Italian National Institute of Astrophysics), which was created to study astronomical sources that emit gamma rays at very high energies.
The logic to be implemented will be derived from the existing software on the ASTRI-Horn prototype telescope installed on Mount Etna as well as from what was created by INAF on the three already existing ASTRI Mini-Array telescopes.
13101-114
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) marks the next era in ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, tailored for the age of multi-messenger astronomy. With over 118 Cherenkov telescopes distributed across two arrays in Spain and Chile, CTAO leverages diverse telescope designs and instruments for unparalleled sensitivity, aiming to advance the study of transient phenomena in the GeV-TeV range.
We present the advancements in the Monitoring, Logging, and Alarm subsystems of the Array Control and Data Acquisition System for the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory.
The Monitoring System is responsible for monitoring and logging the conditions of the overall array, it can help in the rapid identification and diagnosis of faults, while the Array Alarm System enhances observational efficiency by gathering and filtering alarms. This paper provides insights into the system architecture, data structure, and technological choices for implementation.
13101-115
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
In this proceeding we present the Instrument Control Software of LOCNES.
LOCNES (LOw Cost NIR Extended Solar telescope) is a new instrument installed at the TNG (Telescopio Nazionale Galileo), designed to obtain high signal to noise spectroscopic data of the Sun as a Star in the NIR making use of the GIANO-B spectrograph.
The operation and monitoring of LOCNES are carried out with a set of software-controlled motorized components and sensors. The instrument control software also manages the observation and calibration procedures, as well as maintenance, self-test operations and alarms.
The control software of LOCNES is developed using C#, and based on the .NET 6 framework. Internally, the control software makes use of Python 3.
This system has been developed to support both manual and fully automated operation modes, allowing interaction with other TNG subsystems, such as the weather station.
13101-116
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
In this contribution we present the FAST, which is a comprehensive software suite that aims to streamline and automatically manage the forecast of atmospheric and astroclimatic parameters on large ground-based telescope installations. The forecast of the aforementioned parameters is becoming crucial for the operation of the large telescope installations equipped with Adaptive Optics (AO) systems. The role of such service is useful both in optimizing beforehand AO instruments to the next atmospheric conditions and in planning telescope observations (especially in “service mode”) in order to maximize the scientific output. FAST was applied to the ALTA Center and FATE projects, supporting LBT and VLT respectively. Since its first version FAST evolved and it has has been modified to fit with the different technical specifications of the different projects gaining in modularity. It is now able to provide forecasts on different timescales (from days to hours before). After several years of continuous development we can say that FAST reached full maturity and it is now ready for applications to other projects/sites.
13101-117
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
This talk will present AVU-GSR, a verification pipeline of the Gaia ESA mission whose goal is to replicate the AGIS baseline process of the Global Astrometric Sphere Reconstruction. The pipeline produces an independent solution using a different astrometric model and different algorithms for the solution of this problem, thus providing an effective way to assess the reliability of the solution, as it is called by the absolute character of the satellite measurements. We will show the goals of GSR, describing its implementation, its results with real data, and the possible developments for this problem suggested by our experience.
13101-118
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) program, led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), is developing nine 4-meter Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) to detect gamma-ray radiation above 1 TeV at the Teide Observatory in the Canary Islands. To support this project, an on-site Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Infrastructure has been designed.
This paper describes the design of this ICT infrastructure, which includes various subsystems dedicated primarily to hosting the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) software.
The ICT architecture was divided into subsystems dedicated to specific functions: telescope control; acquisition and storage; data quality control; fast transmission to data archiving; and monitoring of the entire Observatory.
All these ICT components are interconnected, so special attention was paid to the network topology to ensure the necessary throughput and reliability of the connections.
13101-119
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The detection of astronomical transients in sky survey images is typically accomplished by comparing each observed field with a previously constructed reference frame representing the time-averaged flux from the sources in the field. Constructing these reference frames can be a demanding process, adding considerable operational burden and commissioning requirements, particularly for multiplexed surveys like the Argus Optical Array. We have developed an alternate technique for transient detection, using deep convolutional and transformer models to subtract the unvarying background scene given a single image of a sky region, including optical variability, weather effects, and sensor systematics. In this presentation, I will present a proof of concept model, including comparisons with the detection latency, false-positive rates, and completeness achievable with existing analytic transient detection pipelines. Finally, I will describe the scaling challenges and process for extending this approach to the terabit-scale data rate of the Argus Optical Array.
13101-120
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The Ariel space telescope in the ESA Cosmic Vision program aims to uncover the chemical composition of exoplanetary atmospheres through transit spectroscopy and photometry. These measurements require stable pointing relative to the host star which is handled by a dedicated instrument: the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS).
The FGS is a science instrument providing photometry and spectroscopy in the visual and near-infrared. A key component of the FGS is the Instrument Application Software (IASW) which handles the processing of science data, guiding as well as general instrument control.
In this paper we explore our design to code workflow and our test-driven development approach while also covering the peculiarities and challenges of the Ariel FGS IASW implementation.
13101-181
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
With the advancement of observation equipment, we have gained access to a vast amount of astronomical images. However, traditional astronomical image pre-processing methods are often developed under traditional CPU architecture, which require a considerable amount of time when dealing with large-scale astronomical image data, thereby restricting the speed of data analysis and research progress. Faced with the above problems, an automated data processing pipeline becomes imperative. In this paper, we propose a pre-processing pipeline for astronomical image data to expedite the processing of large-scale astronomical image data. Our pipeline is built upon the NVIDIA DALI framework, encompassing primary modules such as image quality assessment, image alignment, background estimation, source detection, and grayscale transformation. Leveraging the parallel computing capability of GPUs and optimizing data processing algorithms, we expedite the processing of image data. Through a series of experiments, we demonstrate the outstanding performance of our pipeline in handling astronomical image data of various scales and types. The results indicate that our pipeline significantly reduces proc
13101-182
18 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
New discoveries have always been the driving force behind the advancement of astronomy. However, since there is a huge amount of astronomical target images obtained by modern astronomical surveys, it is difficult to discover celestial objects with unique properties. Currently, two primary methodologies, machine learning and citizen science, are employed for this purpose. While machine learning excels in mining efficiency and automation, its dependence on extensive training data limits its effectiveness in anomalous object searches. Conversely, citizen science has proven to be highly effective in this regard. This study combines machine learning and citizen science to establish an efficient citizen science platform, Galaxy Circus, that can discover anomalous galaxy images. Utilizing a Bayesian classification network, we can screen out the data of the most likely anomalous objects and introduce them to citizen science for further judgment to find out the true anomalous objects. Simultaneously, we employ Bayesian Inference to automatically evaluate the credibility of both users and labels, thereby enhancing the accuracy of labels. In Galaxy Circus, we have successfully imported over 4
Session PS2:
Posters II: Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
13101-122
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
We outline the development of the readout software, primecam_readout, for the Prime-Cam and Mod-Cam instruments on the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope. The instruments feature lumped element kinetic inductance detector (LEKID) arrays driven by Xilinx ZCU111 RFSoC boards. In the current configuration, each board can drive up to 4000 KIDs, and we will be implementing ~20 boards in parallel for Prime-Cam. The software runs on a centralized control computer connected to the boards via dedicated ethernet, and the control channels are mediated through Redis. The control computer utilizes a dynamically generated Redis channel for each command, allowing parallel control over all the boards simultaneously, and logged and saved return messages and files from the boards. This architecture is capable of scaling significantly beyond the initial 20 parallel boards, enabling future expanded focal planes and on-chip spectrometers. The software consists of python 3.7+ scripts on the control computer and boards, facilitating tasks such as frequency-multiplexed tone comb driving, comb calibration and optimization, and detector time stream establishment.
13101-123
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
FRIDA (inFRared Imager and Dissector for Adaptive optics of GTC) is a near infrared imager and integral field spectrograph covering the wavelength range from 0.9 to 2.5 microns. FRIDA will work in two observing modes: direct imaging and integral field spectroscopy.
This paper describes the main achievements and current status in the development of the electronics and control systems for the FRIDA´s cryogenic mechanisms, cabling and House-keeping (HK). A description of main hardware and software tests is presented.
13101-124
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
MCAO Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph (MAVIS) is a new instrument for ESO’s VLT AOF. MAVIS embarks an Adaptive Optics (AO) system to cancel the image blurring induced by atmospheric turbulence.
The latency and computational load induced by the system dimensioning led us to design a new software and hardware architecture for the Real Time Controller (RTC). Notably, the COSMIC framework harnesses GPUs for accelerated computation and is adept at scaling across multiple processes without overhead using shared memory. Employing a graph-based architecture where operations are intuitively represented as nodes. It aims at simplifying design, implementation, testing and integration by relying on robust concepts and useful tools. Recent updates have further enhanced its versatility, cementing its potential as a future-proof, extensible framework for AO advancements and their development process.
13101-125
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
We present a simple sytem for job distribution built on the RabbitMQ open-source message broker. The system is based on the concept of job sources (origins), sinks (destinations) and hubs, where a network of these entities can be readily established with a configuration file for each site and a RabbitMQ server running at each hub. Jobs are sent via
persistent JSON-encoded packets and delivered reliably by RabbitMQ queues.
The system was built primarily for robust data tranfers amidst volatile network connections, but is general enough for any kind of flexible job distribution scheme where reliable delivery of job messages is needed. We are releasing the "datasink" as an open source Python package on Github. Aside from RabbitMQ, there are minimal additional requirements.
13101-128
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
This paper describes the design, implementation, and testing of a modern user interface for the control and tuning of the Gemini Observatory M2 tip/tilt/focus mechanism. As part of observatory upgrades the M2 control electronics that sense and drive the M2 mechanism are being upgraded from a 90’s DOS-based system to contemporary components and software while maintaining and potentially improving system performance. For rapid display, plotting, and analysis (including FFT computation) of telemetry from the control computer, the user interface is a Linux based desktop application built using PyQt. The user interface is an expert user tool for monitoring, controlling, and tuning the M2 mechanism live and exposing low level parameters not typically exposed. The user interface is feature rich with tools for control engineers like plant identification and filter tuning. The performance results and lessons learned during development and through the laboratory testing phase are discussed.
13101-129
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The Rubin Observatory’s Data Butler provides a way for science users to retrieve data without knowing where or how it is stored. In order to support the 10,000 science users in a hybrid cloud environment, we have to modify the Data Butler to use a client/server architecture such that we can share authentication and authorization controls with the Rubin Science Platform and more easily support standard tooling for scaling up backend services. In this talk we describe the changes that had to be made to support this and some of the difficulties that were encountered.
13101-130
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The Herzberg Extensible Adaptive optics Real-Time Toolkit (HEART) is a complete framework written in C and Python for building next-generation adaptive optics (AO) system real-time controllers, with the performance needed for extremely large telescopes. With numerous HEART-based RTCs now in their design or build phases, each with different AO algorithms, target hardware, and observatory requirements, continuous automated builds and tests are a cornerstone of our development effort. In this paper we describe the many levels of testing that we perform, from low-level unit tests of individual functions, to more complex component and system-level tests that verify both numerical correctness and performance. Incorporating extensive testing into HEART since its inception has allowed us to continuously (and confidently) refactor and extend it to both meet the changing needs of local on-sky experiments, as well as those of the numerous major facility instruments that we are developing.
13101-131
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The detection and characterisation of Earth-like planets in the solar neighbourhood is a key scientific goal for the European Southern Observatory’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). A major limitation in achieving the high contrast ratios, i.e. 10^-8 – 10^-9, at the small inner working angles necessary to conduct these observations is the presence of Non-Common Path aberrations (NCPAs), which arise from optical path differences between the adaptive optics system and the science instrument. NCPA calibration is therefore critical for improving the performance of several current and planned instruments including ELT-PCS and HARMONI, a first light instrument for the ELT. We present advances in an alternative approach to NCPA calibration using a deep learning model. The model is trained on both simulated image slicer images and real calibration data obtained from the recently commissioned ERIS integral field spectrograph at the VLT.
13101-132
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is the largest solar telescope in the world, utilizing a 4-m offset primary mirror that accumulates a 13 kW solar load. Safely offsetting that heat load is the Facility Management System (FMS), a subsystem of the Facility Control System (FCS) that controls all aspects of the Facility Thermal System (FTS). During DKIST’s construction phase, each subsystem was commissioned at the most basic acceptable level, then immediately put into a production environment due to pre-existing cooling demands of the facility. This led to a tight time budget to program and deliver the FMS, making sequential prototyping, commissioning, and acceptance nearly impossible. Presented herein is the programming methodology implemented in the FMS that allowed us to meet aggressive moving targets during construction, revise system operation and function in early operations commissioning, and ensures that the system will continue to provide necessary controls for the observatory while maintaining flexibility for future improvements.
13101-133
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The ALMA Observatory has been observing science data for more than 10 years. Since 4 years ago, the Data Processing and consequently the Data Delivery were seriously affected because the large amount of science data needed to be processed. This was mainly because at that moment the observatory missed completely an integration software procedure. The main purpose of this paper is to describe in more detail the complete history, and to present the current regression and integration tests suite we currently have in place.
13101-135
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
We present the design for the MAVIS (MCAO Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph) Data Reduction System describing the two primary workflows and their components. Focus is given to correcting for mid-spatial frequency image distortions (MSF) in the Imager calibrations and techniques to use reconstructed PSF information for improved astrometry and flux calibration. For the Spectrograph workflow the focus falls on the use of a pinhole mask for geometric measurements of the IFU field and the techniques that utilise the etalons for wavelength calibrations. To prototype these complex methods and to test the efficacy of pixel tables and error handling we are using the new ESO PyCPL and PyHDRL libraries, which provide an interface to ESO’s classic Common Pipeline Library (CPL) in the Python ecosystem.
13101-136
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
Gemini Observatory commissioned a SDSU (ARC) detector controller (DC) replacement for the aging GNAAC DC for the Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS). The focus of this paper is on the iterative development approach that led to a unique Python-based DC. We leveraged the stability and modern technology of the Gemini Data System (GDS) and Gemini Instrument API (GIAPI) to facilitate communication between the DC and the Gemini telescope systems. Another core innovation was to implement a Python version of the Gemini specific CAD/CAR EPICS records which allowed us to switch from an EPICS Input Output Controller (IOC) to a Caproto Python IOC. These innovations allow the Python based DC to communicate with all of the many Gemini systems required to process GNIRS observations. The use of a Python based DC enhances the system's functionality but also simplifies future updates and maintenance. Our paper delves into the team-centric iterative development process, the software engineering challenges, and the initial operational performance, emphasizing the software's role in modernizing the observatory's infrastructure.
13101-137
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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We present the Bright Star Subtraction pipeline for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). This pipeline is designed to generate an extended PSF model using observed stars and subtract the model from the bright stars in the LSST data. Our work includes testing the pipeline on deep images from currently available surveys to evaluate its power in subtracting bright stars while preserving LSB structures. Once completed, the pipeline will be a valuable tool for LSB studies in the LSST.
13101-138
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 10-m class optical telescope that has been in operation since 2011. As one of the world's largest telescopes, attention needs to be directed towards mitigating overheads in key areas to ensure optimal scientific output. It is critical for science operations and science output that SALT operates at an efficient level. Software implementations that automate time-consuming processes can significantly reduce the overheads that cost SALT valuable science time. In this paper, an analysis of the problems affecting SALT’s observational efficiency is conducted, as well as an in-depth discussion on how these inefficiencies are being resolved by software such as machine learning.
13101-140
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
Due to the complexity of scientific instruments like spectropolarimeters, managing instrument sequences can be challenging. To address this, a finite state machine (FSM) approach was used to manage solar observation sequences by using the GREGOR Infrared Spectograph (GRIS). FSMs provide a structured and visual representation of control logic, making them well-suited for managing intricate workflows. By using FSMs, scientists can clearly define and modify instrument sequences, ensuring the precise coordination of various instrument components. In spectropolarimeters that support multiple optical channels, such as GRIS, FSMs can effectively manage the selection of the scanning system, synchronize image acquisition across multiple channels, adjust exposure times, and handle errors. To streamline the implementation process, CodeDesigner RAD was used to create diagrams that illustrate the sequence of operations. CodeDesigner's code generation feature automatically translates these diagrams into C++ code. This approach ensures the precise and reliable operation of the GRIS spectropolarimeter.
13101-141
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The ESO Common Pipeline Library (CPL) and High Level Data Reduction Library (HDRL) together form a comprehensive, efficient and robust software toolkit for data reduction pipelines. They were developed in C for reasons of efficiency and speed, however, with the community’s preference towards Python for algorithm prototyping and data reduction, there is a need for access from Python. PyCPL and PyHDRL provide this, making it possible to run existing CPL data reduction recipes from Python as well as developing new recipes in Python. These new recipes are built using the PyCPL and PyHDRL libraries, which provide idiomatic Python interfaces to CPL and HDRL while allowing users to take advantage of the scientific Python ecosystem. PyCPL and PyHDRL are already being used to prototype recipes for the MAVIS instrument pipeline, and have been used to develop an extensible pipeline development framework. Here we describe their design, implementation and usage.
13101-142
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
Taurus is an opensource GUI framework that implements a Model View Controller design pattern tailored for Control Systems. It is based on python and Qt and is extensively used in the Particle Accelerators and Large Experimental Physics community and with Tango Controls.
Taurus solves design patterns and requirements that the ELT Control Software project has for its GUIs. It provides an homogeneous way to interact with any control system and can be extended in many ways.
The Taurus integration into the ELT Control Software is presented; the two plugins that integrate Taurus to ELT back-ends; widgets; and the challenges particular to ELT perspective.
13101-143
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
SHARK-NIR instrument (System for coronagraphy with High Order adaptive optics in Z and H band) has completed its commissioning phase at the Large Binocular Telescope. During the long commissioning nights several issues emerged which led to significant improvements in the architecture of SHINS, its instrument control software.
The new updates concern the internal communication between the software and the electronics resulting in a consistent improvement of the Observation Software performance and of the web based user interface. The other innovations are the new user interface panel dedicated to the Real Time Computing system and, eventually, the de-rotation process implemented for the SHARK-NIR instrument to allow precise long-slit-spectroscopy observation and compensate for field rotation.
13101-144
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The Real Time Computer of the MORFEO@ELT Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics module for the ESO Extremely Large Telescope is responsible for computing the atmosphere tomography and controlling the shape of three deformable mirrors.
Implementing the MORFEO RTC presents many technical challenges due to the high data throughput generated by the system sensors and the heavy processing power required for the real time mirrors’ shape computation. The ESO RTC Toolkit will be used to build the Software RTC subsystem, while the Hard RTC will be based on a custom architecture. A physical design is proposed for the MORFEO SRTC to meet the computational requirements. To validate the architecture’s functionalities, some prototyping activities have been initiated. The prototyping platforms will be also useful in the final design and development stages.
13101-145
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
METIS is one of three first-generation science instruments for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).
It is equipped with an adaptive optics (AO) system and it has recently entered the manufacturing, assembly,
integration and testing (MAIT) phase.
The METIS adaptive optics control system (AOCS) is responsible for the AO wavefront correction.
While the main AO loop runs on a real-time computer (RTC),
several auxiliary functions will run outside of the RTC
in order to maintain the quality of the wavefront correction.
This paper describes the current status of the METIS AOCS
and the driving forces behind the design.
It will demonstrate that the METIS AOCS is capable to meet
its demanding performance requirements
in terms of computing power and data throughput
by using commercial off-the-shelf hardware components and,
therefore, staying compatible to the ELT standards
which has the benefit to facilitate maintenance during the life-time
of the instrument.
13101-146
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
METIS will use an internal SCAO system to correct for atmospheric distortions and enable diffraction-limited observations. The SCAO system recently passed its final design phase while the ELT is expected to have its first light in 2028. The computational and data transfer requirements for these next generation ELT RTCs are enormous and require advanced data processing and pipelining techniques. METIS SCAO will use a pyramid wavefront sensor (WFS) to capture incoming wavefronts at 1kHz with a raw throughput of 148 MB/s. The Hard Real Time Computer (HRTC) has a loop computation time of 382µs and runs on two Nvidia A100 GPUs while the Soft Real Time Computer (SRTC) is a distributed system responsible for more than 27 auxiliary tasks that monitor the HRTC and compute dynamic runtime parameters. We will present the current design choices, performance and possible improvements for the METIS RTC.
13101-147
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
METIS, the Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph, will be one of the first-generation ELT instruments. METIS has an instrument control system (ICS) that allows the instrument to operate in various observing modes, using a multitude of mostly cryogenic mechanisms. The ICS is built using the ESO ELT instrument framework, which provides the building blocks to control the various mechanisms, along with the interface to the telescope and its services. In this paper we provide an overview of the electronics, the low-level PLC-based software, and the high-level PC-based software. We show how the combination of off-the-shelf industrial hardware and the ELT instrument framework, can meet the requirements of ELT instruments, and how we alleviate some of the organizational challenges that are inherent to the development of a complex instrument by institutes in different locations.
13101-148
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
The Multi-Adaptive Optics Imaging Camera for Deep Observations (MICADO) is the first light ESO Extremely-Large-Telescope (ELT) Instrument and now nearing the completion of its final design stage. The MICADO instrument aims to generate high-resolution images of the Universe at near-infrared wavelengths, which requires maintaining a stable vacuum environment at 82 K inside the MICADO cryostat.
To fulfill this requirement and for safety reasons, a PLC-based control software is used. This software communicates with over 180 sensors and devices simultaneously to remotely maintain the cryostat environment. This paper discusses the software’s design architecture and implementation.
13101-149
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
MORFEO is the Multi Conjugate Adaptive Optics module for the Extremely Large Telescope. It will correct the incoming wavefront by means of three deformable mirrors. The wavefront sensing is based on six laser guide stars and three natural guide stars. The Real Time Computer consists of a Hard Real Time Core and a Soft Real Time Cluster. The former acquires data from the wavefront sensors and controls the deformable mirrors and jitter mirrors. The latter provides the interface toward the Instrument Control System Software, performs all the supervisory and monitoring tasks and the auxiliary loops for optimisation of the wavefront correction.
This paper discusses the updated design after the PDR, following the preliminary test results obtained by the instrumentation founded by the PNRR STILES. It also provides a description of the distributed architecture adopted by the SRTC, the derivation of requirements for the HRTC and the interfaces between HRTC and SRTC.
13101-150
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
Show Abstract +
MATTO (Multi-conjugate Adaptive Techniques Test Optics) is a wide-field adaptive optics test bench, under development at the INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Padova, with the goal of supporting the study and development of new Multi-Conjugated Adaptive Optics (MCAO) techniques. Hence, it has been designed to be flexible and composed of independently-configurable modules.
The DAO4MATTO real-time control (RTC) system will be a system-tailored implementation of DAO, the new RTC software solution developed at Durham University, that will interface with and control several devices with different purposes.
After a short presentation of the main concepts of MATTO and its RTC hardware design, we briefly discuss the architecture of DAO4MATTO. Furthermore, we show some preliminary findings obtained in a closed-loop scenario for a basic prototype system, composed of a visible wavelength camera, a Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor and a deformable mirror.
13101-151
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Simons Observatory (SO) is a ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment that will use over 60,000 transition-edge sensors to observe frequencies between 30 GHz and 280 GHz. The detectors will be read out using SQUID microwave-frequency multiplexing (uMux), which couples each TES bolometer to a superconducting resonator via an RF squid. This technology allows us to read out on order of 1000 detectors per RF transmission line. One challenge of uMux is matching each tracked resonator with its corresponding physical detector. In this study, we introduce a method for pairing measured and designed resonators by constructing a bipartite graph based on the two resonator sets, and assigning matching-costs based on measured resonator and detector properties. Finding the minimum-cost matching for the constructed graph then gives us a good initial guess for resonator pairings, which can then be refined by eye and with additional data. Results based on the first on-sky measurements from the SO small aperture telescope will be presented.
13101-152
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The METIS instrument requires precise temperature control to minimize thermal background radiation and ensure optimal performance. The cryostat control system plays a crucial role in achieving and maintaining the required thermal stability. The METIS cryo-control system is implemented on systems based on a BECKHOFF programmable logic controller (PLC) and the EtherCAT fieldbus. It utilizes the ESO ELT Cryo-toolkit, which provides building blocks of components to support individual hardware components.
13101-153
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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VSTPOL enhances VST's capabilities by adding optical polarimetry via a linear polarized filter. This will make the VST the first large wide-field survey telescope with optical polarimetry. The project addresses the need for optical follow-up observations of Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) sources and transients. This paper describes software upgrades required for the new polarimetric mode.
The current instrument control software, based on ESO VLT software 2011, manages pointing, acquisition, and active optics. The polarimetric mode necessitates two additional motorized movements: inserting the filter and selecting polarization while tracking the object.
Traditionally, VLT systems use a Local Control Unit (LCU) on VxWorks for motor control, but this system is outdated. Since compatibility with modern hardware is crucial, we resorted to a PLC-based system, which are unsupported by the installed VLTSW. Fortunately, the ICS Fieldbus Extension allows for a dedicated Device Control Environment (DCE). This DCE, using an updated VTLSW release, acts as a gateway to control electronics, minimizing system-wide impact and reducing update-related risks.
13101-154
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Atmospheric visibility is a major factor in the quality of data produced by ground-based instruments in astronomy. Two instruments Canada France Hawaii Telescope uses to address this issue are ASIVA and SkyProbe. ASIVA produces all-sky infrared and visible light images to identify clouds, and SkyProbe produces an attenuation measurement for the atmosphere in between the telescope and its observation target. A Convolutional Neural Network is used to detect clouds on Mauna Kea using ASIVA archival data. A full-sky model was able to determine clear skies with 100% accuracy and cloudy skies with 96% accuracy. A separate heatmap generator model used a small kernel passed over an input image to determine the likelihood of cloud coverage at each location, producing an AUC of 0.987. Further work is being done to incorporate SkyProbe data by correlating measurements to locations in ASIVA images. Preliminary results show a strong ability to differentiate clear from cloudy kernels. However, dataset limitations inhibit a strong correlation between predicted and actual attenuation values. Additional work is needed to tune the model architecture and find more data in ASIVA archives.
13101-155
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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CAESAR is an ASI-INAF project for the development of the prototype of the ASI SPace weather InfraStructure (ASPIS), to unify Space Weather resources through a flexible architecture, allowing researchers to exploit the whole chain of phenomena from the Sun to the Earth up to planetary environments.
Design considerations and challenges for the prototype are reported: the collection of research products and metadata; the design of the pilot database; the concept of the causal chain, kept flexible to cope with the heterogeneous products to be ingested; the archive's user interfaces: a graphical web interface and an advanced Python module.
13101-156
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a 4-m class solar telescope incorporating a multi-conjugate adaptive optics system (MCAO) within its optical path. Despite its open-dome configuration, wind exposure significantly impacts image stability. This study focuses on merging active optics (AcO), handling real-time optical adjustments for mechanical issues, with adaptive optics (AO), countering atmospheric turbulence. Strategies are explored for their integration, utilizing high-sensitivity wavefront sensors, advanced control algorithms, and adaptive deformable mirrors. AcO targets low-frequency distortions like wind perturbances, while AdO tackles high-frequency atmospheric turbulences. The paper presents an analysis of the control loop and planned actuation ranges for this active-adaptive optics integration in solar telescopes.
13101-157
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The European Solar Telescope (EST), a 4-m solar telescope with a multi-conjugate adaptive optics system (MCAO), faces challenges due to its open-dome design exposed to wind, impacting image stability. This contribution outlines the integration of the MCAO's M2 mirror, Adaptive Secondary Mirror (ASM), and Active Optics (AcO) with the telescope structure, considering potential vibrations and deformations causing image motion. Seamless integration between the secondary mirror and telescope structure is vital for optimal astronomical precision. A Simulink model evaluates image stability, accounting for M2-telescope structure interactions, offering preliminary simulation-based insights into enhancing synchronization and stability in solar observations.
13101-158
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Visible Tunable Filter Instrument (VTF) is a 2D imaging
spectropolarimeter for high spatial and spectral resolution solar
observations in the visible light. Integration into the world
largest solar telescope, the 4m aperture Daniel K. Inouye Solar
Telescope (DKIST) starts in January 2024.
In this paper we present an overview over the complete software
infrastructure designed and developed for this instrument. In
particular the Instrument Control Software (ICS), the Instrument
Performance Calculator (IPC) and the real-time monitoring plugins
implemented to verify data acquisition and instrument stability.
13101-159
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The new Focal Plane Systems (FPS) built for the fifth iteration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) at Las Campanas Observatory and Apache Point Observatory each consist of 500 robotic fiber positioners, feeding optical and infrared multi-object spectrographs, that can be arranged in configurations, internally called "designs", to match science targets in the night sky. SDSS-V plans to observe roughly 50,000 of these designs over the 5 year survey, with up to 30 being observed on a single night at each observatory. Besides the sheer volume of designs, there are strict time domain requirements ("cadences") that must be respected in order to complete the signature SDSS time domain surveys. This complex set of requirements necessitates software that can ensure cadence requirements are always respected, in addition to normal observing requirements such as maximum skybrightness, moon distance, etc., while also optimizing the designs scheduled in a night to ensure all designs are completed by the end of the survey. We present an overview of the roboscheduler package which was developed to solve these problems.
13101-160
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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ScopeSim is a general-purpose observation data simulation environment for astronomical instruments. It allows users to simulate observations with multiple instruments for the same (often custom built) target description using a common software platform, thus enabling “apples-to-apples” comparisons of the outputs.
The simulation engine has been described in a previous proceedings paper (Leschinski+2020), however behind the scenes a vast infrastructure has been built to support the ScopeSim engine. The supporting elements are in some cases major projects in their own right, with multiple additional use cases and user groups. For example, the instrument reference database (IRDB) provides a public and open-source platform for instrument consortia to distribute a coherent picture of the optical properties and characteristics of their instrument(s).
In these proceedings we aim to shed light on the various elements of the infrastructure required to support simulations done with ScopeSim.
13101-161
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Building on the Square Kilometre Array's (SKA) Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) advancements, this paper focuses the adoption and evolution of cloud-native technologies in the integration environment and subsystem-level orchestration. We present SKA's transformative journey employing Kubernetes, Integration environment and release process to streamline development workflows, automate integration testing, and ensure high-velocity deployments. The paper discusses strategies for dynamic environment provisioning, the seamless integration of independently developed subsystems, and the management of complex workflows with advanced CI/CD capabilities. We highlight the implementation of Kubernetes cluster integration environments with software's lifecycle management across multi-cloud environments, accentuating a robust, scalable, and transparent infrastructure. These cloud-native paradigms have not only optimized observatory operations but have also paved the way for enhanced collaboration, observability, and reliability in the era of large-scale astronomical projects.
13101-162
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The MANIFEST is a facility fiber positioner proposed for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) - also funded by NSF's NOIRLab - designed to be compatible with upcoming instruments to observe several targets at once. In order to control the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the exposure times of a set of objects, as well as determining the optimal number and arrangement of observations it should perform, there is a need for new software that builds upon existing exposure time calculators (ETCs). We developed a Python code capable of managing these variables and integrated it to the GMT-Consortium Large Earth Finder (G-CLEF) ETC. The algorithm is inspired by binary searching routines, dividing the original set into smaller subsets based on brightness and saturation. The results, based on simulations, show that we can deliver uniform behavior across an optimal set of observations given the range of SNR and a total exposure time. Our code can be adapted to work with other instruments on world-class telescopes, such as the Gemini Observatory, to observe multiple objects in the most optimal way possible.
13101-163
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Commissioned in November 2022 at W. M. Keck Observatory (WMKO), the Keck Planet Finder (KPF) instrument is a fiber-fed high resolution spectrometer, developed in partnership with California Institute of Technology, University of California Berkeley Space Science Laboratory, and University of California at Santa Cruz. At the heart of object acquisition and tracking is KPF's guiding system, which uses 100 Hz tip/tilt corrections to maintain the target on the fiber aperture, and coarse telescope corrections to keep the target within the effective range of the tip/tilt mechanism.
This paper covers the design of the guider software at the heart of these corrections, emphasizing simplicity for the initial approach, deliberately avoiding potentially unnecessary optimization, while leveraging existing standards and practices at WMKO. The software is implemented in Python with one key component written in C. The paper covers the gradual process of optimization, addressing critical performance bottlenecks in targeted fashion without rewriting the bulk of the code; the specific bottlenecks addressed include image acquisition, image transmission, command transmission, and image processing.
13101-164
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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During integration and testing, the Roman Space Telescope (RST) Wide Field Instrument (WFI) will be utilizing a preliminary Science Data Processing (SDP) pipeline to track basic statistics and identify known features such as snowballs, cosmic rays as well as possible anomalies in raw detector data. The WFI employs an array of 18 H4RG-10 detectors that collect image samples that the SDP merges together into image cubes. To identify anomalies, we employ and evaluate the performance and runtime of both heuristic-based and data-driven techniques to provide multiple options for full implementation in the SDP pipeline.
13101-165
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project aims to establish two radio interferometers in South Africa and Australia, forming a singular Observatory centrally monitored from the UK's global headquarters at Jodrell Bank. This international endeavor involves the deployment of large-scale computational facilities on both continents to handle the substantial data generated by the radio telescopes. Given the project's distributed nature and the extensive use of servers, a remote deployment and management system has been implemented. Leveraging open-source technologies like OpenStack Ironic/Bifrost and IPMI/Redfish interfaces, the system achieves full automation for deploying bare metal servers. This innovative approach enables a globally situated team to remotely bootstrap and manage servers without the need for physical presence, ensuring efficient and seamless operation of the SKA project's infrastructure.
13101-166
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Simons Observatory (SO) is a cosmic microwave background (CMB) observatory consisting of three small aperture telescopes and one large aperture telescope. SO is located in the Atacama desert in Chile at an elevation of 5180m. Distributed among the four telescopes are over 60,000 transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers across six spectral bands centered between 30 and 280 GHz. A large collection of ancillary hardware devices, which produce lower rate "housekeeping" data, are used to support the detector data collection. We describe an overview of the software and computing systems used within SO, software deployment strategies, and how the various software systems interact with each other. We also discuss the timing distribution system and its configuration as well as lessons learned during the deployment process and where we plan to make future improvements in these processes.
13101-167
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Taranta project, a collaboration between the MaxIV Institute and SKAO in the Tango Collaboration, introduces a no-code solution for creating graphical interfaces dedicated to monitoring and controlling Tango-based systems. Developed collaboratively, the software has undergone active refinement, resulting in advanced features and improved functionality.
The current software state supports adoption in both MaxIV synchrotron beamline operations and the SKA project's developmental phases. New features include accessing devices from different Tango databases within a single dashboard. Architectural improvements allow seamless integration with applications like Synoptic, enabling third-party data source incorporation. Ongoing improvements are influenced by user feedback.
The presentation will discuss a significant challenge—meeting diverse demands from institutes with varying scientific purposes and project stages. This involves considerations of architecture, component numbers, and operator skill sets. Lessons learned will highlight the importance of adaptability in a dynamic collaborative environment. The presentation will outline the roadmap strategy, emphasizing creating comp
13101-168
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Disturbance removal in astronomical images is of paramount importance both for automated processing methods
and for “manual” inspection of images by humans. Disturbances in images comes in various forms and can be
introduced in the raw signal itself as either noise, when random processes are involved, or artifacts, due to signal
acquisition modality. Such is the case of signals acquired by earth rotation aperture synthesis where astronomical
observations are made by integrating multiple signals coming from arrays of geographically distributed radio
antennas. In this work we provide a dataset and present a deep learning nertwork for removing interferometry artifacts in
combined images generated by aperture synthesis. The model combines the capabilities of both U-Nets [1] and
Vision Transformers [2]. The CANDELS dataset was used as the seed dataset. The 16200×16200 images were
randomly sampled by extracting random crops of size 1024×1024. The model was trained on a split comprising 60% of the dataset (60,000 images), 20% (20,000 images) was used for validation and 20% (20,000 images) in testing achieving a PSNR of 18db and a SSIM score of 0.51.
13101-169
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The TSRS was a set of two multi-channel solar radio polarimeters which performed continuous surveillance of the decimetric and metric coronal radio emissions with high time resolution. TSRS was operational in Trieste (Italy) under the management of the INAF Astronomical Observatory of Trieste from 1969 to 2010 when a lightning stroke irreparably compromised its operations. Starting from that moment, all the services related to it, including the archive system, were abandoned due to lack of funds and resources.
An Heritage Archive (TSRS-HA) has been preserved with the available digitised data and this contribution describes how it was planned to refurbish archive and service for such an heritage resource following current common FAIR principles adherence and new technologies.
13101-170
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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We are pleased to share our open-source C and Python3 libraries, and a set of tools, that support the efficient sharing of structured data among the various systems and subsystems of a telescope. The SMA eXchange (SMA-X) is a real-time data storage convention build around a central Redis database, originally for the Submillimeter Array (SMA). It supports flexible storage of hierarchical (tree-structured) data, with the possibility of efficient retrieval of specific elements or sub-trees, including the associated metadata (types, dimensions, timestamps, and origins, and optionally the associated physical units and coordinates systems also).
We developed and deployed SMA-X at the Submillimer Array (SMA), where, we rely on it to share a diverse set of ~10,000 real-time variables and arrays, used by over a 100 computers, with some of it produced at cadences as short as 10 ms. Additionally, we include a set of command-line tools also that can be used to access the database from the POSIX shell and/or from any scripting language, and provide a configurable tool for storing changes in the database at regular intervals into a time-series SQL database to create a historical record.
13101-171
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The SKA Central Signal Processor is a real-time system that provides visibilities and pulsar search and timing capabilities. The system is currently in an evolutionary state where different components, developed by different teams, are at different maturity levels.
In this context, we leverage a collaborative design approach to gather expertise from different teams and develop a set of engineering dashboards that effectively represent the system in its current state, identifying a process that allows for evolving them as the system grows.
The paper presents the details of the adopted method as well as its challenges and lessons learnt.
13101-172
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The SKAO project, engaging 30+ global teams, employs SAFe for agile management. The CREAM team develops software for CSP.LMC subsystem and Taranta web interface. Some Taranta features, meeting DoD and management criteria, fall short of user needs, leading to underutilization or loss of confidence. A hypothesized cause is the lack of a beta testing process at release. In SAFe, features are demonstrated during release, with limited adjustments based on session feedback.
This paper proposes integrating beta tests into SAFe's 2-level iterations (quarterly and bi-weekly), addressing challenges in exploring UX issues, delivering solutions within consecutive sprints, and adhering to DoD. Steps include selecting beta users, conducting tests, collecting feedback, implementing changes, and assessing impact. Post-release, user behaviors are studied for satisfaction. This approach, tested with small SKAO groups, could standardize across SKAO teams and other large scientific projects using agile methods.
13101-173
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is a 4-meter solar observatory in operation at Haleakalā, Hawaii. The High-Level Software (HLS) group develops and maintains software and control systems for the observatory. During the nearly 20 yearlong observatory construction phase we utilized the Concurrent Versioning System (CVS) as the revision control component of our software configuration management process. As we transitioned into the observatory operations phase, we began looking at using a more modern revision control system that would offer more flexibility and control for software development going forward. Through our long-term planning process, the decision was made to transition from CVS to the Git revision control system. In this paper we describe the motivation to move from CVS to Git for software revision control at DKIST and explain the planning involved to ensure a smooth transition. We will review challenges faced, planning steps involved, migration results, and look at lessons learned from from the process. We conclude by sharing initial feedback from the team on the experience thus far using Git.
13101-174
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Gaia Legacy idea born to enhance the HW and SW system of Gaia's Big Data Ground Segment in Turin and to be a center for the management, visualization, processing, manipulation and analysis of large amounts of data that require the development and implementation of innovative systems with exascale approach, guaranteeing high response speeds. The system responds to the scientific needs of the INAF community beyond the core science of the Gaia mission itself under a multimessenger approach such as characterization of cosmological gravitational waves and degenerate binary systems in the Milky Way. The system will extend its operability to engineering data collected by space instrumentation for studies of future missions and qualification of instrumental models.
In this talk we present the OPS4 Gaia Legacy project which goal is the generation of a deep and complete sky, on 4π sterad, as a reference tool and therefore interoperable for the integration of multiband data (from radio to high energies) and multimessenger data (e.g. sources of gravitational waves, neutrinos,...) for efficient data mining aimed at fast multidimensional scientific data exploitation.
13101-175
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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This project introduces a new Machine Learning (ML) pipeline aimed at enhancing data processing in astronomical observatories. Initially developed for the BlackGEM telescope array, this automated pipeline aims to significantly reduce nightly data processing time and false positives rate. By integrating various deep learning algorithms and adhering to ML Operations (MLOps) principles, the pipeline promises enhanced performance and adaptability for present and future observatories. It will streamline the analysis of astronomical data, improve transient detection, and allow for more efficient sky surveys, enabling the study of a wider range of celestial phenomena. The modular design of the pipeline not only boosts efficiency but will also foster collaboration and innovation within the astronomical community.
13101-176
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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The Square Kilometre Array precursors are starting releasing the first data of their
large-field continuum surveys, making clear that also in the field of radio astronomy, deep learning turns as the primary solution for handling an overwhelming volume of data.
Within this framework, our research group is taking a forefront position in various research initiatives aimed at assessing the effectiveness of ML techniques on survey data from ASKAP and MeerKAT.
In this work we show how an unsupervised multi-stage pipeline is able to discover physically meaningful clusters within the heterogeneous Supernova Remnant (SNR) population: a convolutional autoencoder extracts features from multiwavelength imagery of a SNR sample; then an unsupervised clustering process operates on the latent space.
Despite a large number of outliers, we were able to find a new classification system, in which most clusters relate to the presence of certain features, such as the distribution of infrared emission, the presence of radio shells and pulsar wind nebulae, and the existence of dust filaments.
13101-178
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Physical optics models predicting an instrument’s point spread function from its hardware state are essential in data analysis and hardware design - but models may be parametrized by very many variables describing source spectra, optical surfaces, and detector effects, and jointly inferring or optimizing these parameters can therefore be intractable. We present the first public release of dLux, a hardware-accelerated, differentiable physical optics simulation code written using Jax, which can simultaneously perform phase retrieval, detector calibration, and source inference in astronomical scenes, or be used to design optical systems with end-to-end simulations and gradient descent. We provide an overview of its features, highlights of its science and engineering applications to date, and discuss in particular using dLux for precise data-driven calibration of JWST instruments.
13101-179
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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Astronomical transients are important targets for time domain observations. Ground-based wide-angle camera arrays (GWAC) are employed for exploring transient sources, featuring a large field of view and high temporal sampling rates. These devices generate substantial data streams nightly, aiming to swiftly identify short-lived optical transients. In contrast to conventional sky survey projects, GWAC camera systems demand a faster transient source identification processing speed. To address this challenge, we have developed a framework for the detection, identification, and classification of transient sources. The framework comprises data preprocessing, image differencing, and classification. For the classification component, we have devised a multi-input convolutional neural network (CNN) incorporating both original images and meta data of celestial objects. The data processing framework has exhibited significant improvements in speed and accuracy, which makes it possible to be used for transient detection in the GWAC telescope.
13101-180
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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With the ongoing advancement of human space activities, space debris have brought more and more problems. It is crucial to develop high efficienct space debris detection method. However, traditional target detection methods face a series of challenges in detecting space targets due to the complexity of data and noise interference. This paper aims to enhance the accuracy and reliability of detection by utilizing advanced target detection models such as YOLOX and YOLOv8 for FITS data of space objects. To further improve detection performance, we introduce the concept of ensemble learning and construct a multi-model integrated object detection framework by simultaneously utilizing the output of multiple models.The technology of Weighted Boxes Fusion (WBF) has been adopted to effectively integrate the output of multiple models by taking into account the confidence and spatial information of each model. The objective of the method presented in this paper is to synthesize the strengths of various models and enhance the overall system's robustness and generalization ability.
13101-183
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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There are many source detection algorithms developed for different observation projects. A lot of parameters are included in these algorithms, which normally require additional human interventions in real applications. For time domain astronomical observations, it is necessary to process observation images as soon as possible, which makes it impossible to fine-tune parameters of source detection algorithms for each observation images. This research is dedicated to solving the challenge of fine-tuning parameters in source detection algorithms with the reinforcement learning. Our framework firstly extract image features and then the agent will obtain parameters of source detection algorithms based on these features. This innovative approach introduces new possibilities to the field of object detection, enabling algorithms to self-improve and adapt to changing data and environments, improving practicality and accuracy.
13101-184
19 June 2024 • 17:30 - 19:00 Japan Standard Time | Room G5, North - 1F
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This research introduces Huoliuxing, a public science platform crafted for the identification and analysis of meteors, leveraging data contributed by citizen scientists and smart camera arrays. In the online domain, meteor data is collected from uploads by citizen scientists. Concurrently, we provide Smart Camera Arrays capable of detecting meteors efficiently and at scale. This is made possible through the integration of real-time edge device data processing with cloud-based storage and analysis. The data captured by these Smart Camera Arrays is automatically transmitted to the platform for further scrutiny. Following data acquisition, a specialized team employs a combination of machine learning algorithms and human vetting to meticulously examine the data. Only meteor detection results that meet the predefined evaluation criteria are utilized to compute trajectories and potential meteorite landing locations. The Huoliuxing website successfully underwent a test run last year and is poised to receive more data in the coming years, with scientific data set to be made available soon.
Program Committee
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (Australia)
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