This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 11449, including the Title Page, Copyright information, and Table of Contents.

Introduction: Observatory Operations: Strategies, Processes, and Systems VIII

The transition from construction to operations of the Thirty-Meter-Telescope (TMT) will happen over a phase of "early-operations” that will last several years to encompass the technical and science commissioning of its main systems, and will conclude when the facility enters "steady-state operations” (early 2030s according to the current schedule). In this talk, we will present the current plan for technical and scientific operations of the Thirty-Meter-Telescope, including a description of its organizational structure, staffing and day-to-day activities. TMT's science operations model will be aimed at optimizing the science impact of the TMT and its operations efficiency, while providing a high-level of support to TMT users over all phases (submission, implementation and (post-)execution) of their science programs.

The Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope is evolving to maximize scientific productivity in an era dominated by large surveys and multi-messenger astronomy, while still retaining its role as a vehicle for flexible scientific programs, and as a source of training for advanced students and other early-career scientists. It must also manage this evolution in a cost-effective way. We describe the evolution of the facility to software-intensive queue scheduling for a large fraction of the science time. During queue operation, the telescope operates as part of a network of facilities that will provide observations over a range of apertures, longitude and latitude, and instrumental capability. We further describe the renewal of telescope systems and the instrument suite that is required to ensure that the facility remains reliable and scientifically competitive over the next decade and beyond.

Las Cumbres Observatory is the only globally-distributed network of robotically-controlled telescopes. In 2018, we launched a program to overhaul the procedures by which network problems are detected, diagnosed and resolved. The program fostered numerous improvements, including new software tools to monitor active telescopes, documentation of recovery procedures, and daily reviews of operations problems. The benefit to users has been an increase in on-sky hours. We discuss the improvements we have made over the past two years. We emphasize the implementation of procedures ensuring problems are promptly addressed and completely resolved. We present our workflow as a model for how to manage a system of interconnected telescopes.

In late 2021, the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera will be shipped from SLAC National Laboratory in California to Cerro Pach´on in Chile. The Camera shipping container, designed based on lessons learned from previous shipments, is a standard 20 ft steel container retrofitted with a vibration-isolation system and insulation. This modified container will be shipped with a Camera mass surrogate from SLAC to the summit in early 2021 in order to verify as many aspects of the procedure and hardware as possible. Results from this preliminary shipment will guide further improvements to the shipping process prior to the shipment of the LSST Camera.

Service mode observations at ESO's Paranal Observatory relies on the ability to grade science observations. The grading criteria, as defined by the submitter of the program are based mainly on external conditions (e.g. sky transparency, atmospheric seeing) and the grading is done by the night crew immediately after the observations. One of the top-level requirements for operating the E-ELT is to improve observation grading scheme by including criteria based on pipeline-reduced science data. The implementation of a science data grading for a range of different instruments and data types requires the development of new versatile software tools. They would feature real time data visualization, the ability to measure a variety of data quality indicators and able to render the necessary information to the night operators in order to properly grade the science data. We will present the SCUBA software which provides a visualization interface for quality control to all data taken at Paranal.

SALT is a 10-m class optical telescope located in Sutherland, South Africa, owned by an international consortium and operated in fully queue-scheduled mode by the South African Astronomical Observatory. In this paper we present an update on all observatory performance metrics since the start of full science operations in late 2011, including science time, weather and technical downtime, and time used for planned engineering activities and commissioning. We analyze key statistics describing the science output of SALT, the completion fractions of scheduled observations and programs per priority class, and analyze the more than 260 refereed papers since the start of operations in 2011 until the end of 2019. We further discuss 2020, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our metrics, and the resulting, successful move to full remote operations since May 2020. The SALT refereed paper has continued along a similar trend to other 6-10 m observatories (when scaled by the number of telescopes). When scaled by operations costs (where known), SALT is still clearly very cost-effective compared to most other large telescope operations. It is interesting to note that, while our main workhorse instrument, the RSS spectrograph, still produces the largest number of papers and dominates our best conditions queue (i.e. dark time, best seeing, photometric conditions), with the arrival of the high-resolution data reduction pipeline at the end of 2016, the HRS is now used ~40% of the time and is our main instrument during bright Moon and poorer conditions. Spectropolarimetry continues to be widely. Our Fabry- Pérot system is undergoing repairs and it is hoped it will be back online in the latter part of 2021. We also briefly discuss our upcoming instrumentation and facility developments and show SALT's near- and long-term exciting future.

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) is the largest single dish telescope in the world focused on submillimeter astronomy - and it remains at the forefront of sub-millimeter discovery space. JCMT continues its push for higher efficiency and greater science impact with a switch to fully remote operation. This switch to remote operations occurred on November 1st 2019. The switch to remote operations should be recognized to be part of a decade long process involving incremental changes leading to Extended Observing - observing beyond the classical night shift - and eventually to full remote operations. The success of Remote Observing is indicated in the number of productive hours and continued low fault rate from before and after the switch.

The current STELLA Échelle spectrograph (SES), which records 390nm to 870nm in one shot at a spectral resolution of 55000, will be replaced by a suite of specialized spectrographs in three spectral bands. The UV will be covered by a newly designed H and K spectrograph covering 380nm to 470nm (SES-H and K), the visual band (470nm - 690 nm) will be covered by SES-VIS, which is a vacuum-stabilized spectrograph designed for high radial-velocity accuracy, and the NIR will be covered by the current SES spectrograph from 690nm to 1050 nm. In order to improve the UV transmission, and to accommodate three different fibre-feeds, the prime focus corrector of the telescope will be refurbished, leading to an optical system with the f/2 1200mm spherical primary, a 4-lens collimator with 2" aperture, atmospheric dispersion corrector (ADC), and two dichroic beam splitters, feeding 3 separate fibre feeds for the three bands. The newly designed H and K spectrograph will be an Échelle spectrograph, based on a R4-grating with 41.6 l/mm and 110mmx420mm, using a f/5 camera and the cross-disperser in double pass (as in TRAFICOS, MIKE, KPF), using 21 spectral orders. The spectral resolution of all three spectrographs will be comparable to the current SES's 55000.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey V (SDSS-V) is an all-sky spectroscopic survey of more than 6 million objects, designed to decode the history of the Milky Way, reveal the inner workings of stars, investigate the origin of solar systems, and track the growth of supermassive black holes across the Universe. SDSS-V presents significant innovations in both hardware and software, chiefly due to the introduction of a robotic Focal Plane System (FPS) that replaces plug-plate operations. This new mode of operations introduces new challenges with respect to target scheduling, fibre robot positioner reconfiguration optimisation, telescope guiding, observer interfaces, and observatory operations. During normal operations SDSS-V will observe a new field every 15 minutes. For each field requiring a new telescope pointing the FPS will reconfigure 500 robotic fibre positioners with feedback from an external Field Viewing Camera (FVC) in less than two minutes. Six CCD cameras mounted on the FPS will be used to automatically acquire the field and maintain the necessary guiding accuracy. These strict requirements highlight the need for streamlined operations software and procedures to minimise the time spent during FPS reconfigurations. We describe the overall design and implementation of the SDSS-V survey operations, with special emphasis on software development, conventions, and observing procedures. While specific to SDSS-V, the solutions we describe can be readily applied to other astronomical surveys and are of special interest given the rapid increase in projects employing robotic fibre positioners.

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) survey will target the same patch of sky from several dozens to 100 times. The problem of allocating PFS' 2394 fibers to objects over many visits of a field is a highly non-trivial optimization problem. Our network flow approach models the fiber allocation as a generalized network min-cost/max-flow problem. This methodology is inspired by SDSS, but extends this to address the variety of requirements of the the PFS survey. Ultimately, we solve the network flow through linear programming. This generally provides a very good solution in reasonable amounts of time and can give a clear quantitative measure of just “how good it is”. It allows us to define an arbitrary number of target classes with different weights, to enforce constraints on the target distribution, and to put caps to the number of observed objects per class. We will present the methodology and the implementation of our approach.

In the ESO ELT control electronics guidelines, the hardware devices are located in standard COTS cabinets, each equipped with an air-liquid heat exchanger. In this paper a different architecture is explored, with the purpose of further exploiting the possibility of these devices to communicate remotely via EtherCAT. Advantages and drawbacks of this architecture are analyzed in terms of harness complexity, cabinets volume and mass, type of installation. Particular focus is given to the thermal requirement, with an analysis of the distributed architecture compliance with said requirement.

The 64m Parkes Radio Telescope, known affectionately as `The Dish', is now approaching its 60th year of operation. It has receiver systems capable of observing from 700 MHz to 26 GHz with bandwidths up to 3 GHz. The Dish has continued to be at the forefront of radio astronomy and technology research, having had many improvements, including the 13-beam 1.4􀀀GHz multibeam receiver which enabled unprecedented surveys of atomic hydrogen in the Southern sky, and helped discover approximately half the known population of pulsars, as well as discovering Fast Radio Bursts. The Parkes Radio Telescope was recognised as a Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Pathfinder in 2016, on the basis of Phased Array and Wideband Feed technology development. It also became part of the Breakthrough Listen project, with an initiation of paid telescope time operation, that now also includes time for dedicated follow-up of detections with the Five-hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, FAST. I will present a summary of the current status of the capabilities of the Parkes Radio Telescope, how we are increasing efficiency through new SKA oriented technology, whilst still maintaining science yield. This includes an ultra-wide bandwidth low frequency receiver (700MHz􀀀4 GHz, replacing 4 previous receivers), now in national facility operation, a plan for a higher frequency ultra-wideband receiver (4GHz to _25􀀀32 GHz, replacing 5 previous receivers), and a cryogenically cooled Phased Array Feed under design (to replace the 13- beam receiver). I will also present our operational model, and how we balance competitive open access science time with purchased telescope time.

The first Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) antennas were inaugurated during 2009 at the facility in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. The requirement from the original ALMA specification was that antennas shall have a minimum of 10 years between major maintenance (overhauls); therefore the first antennas now require refurbishment at the ALMA technical facility. Refurbishment of the antennas was mainly focused on corrosion and sealing repair, drive system components analysis and exchange, cleaning, control system maintenance, and exchanging several electrical components. ALMA also used the opportunity of the overhaul to make some antenna improvements based on experience from operations. This paper will present the lessons learned from the first overhauls, the planning process, changes from the original manufacturer requirements, the checkout process, and some expected hurdles for future overhauls. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA

The 25 European Antennas of ALMA were delivered by ESO to the ALMA project in Chile between 2011 and 2013. Since then, they are operated and routinely maintained under extreme conditions. The content of the documentation of the European ALMA Antennas is in constant need for content-wise updates due to diverse component and software upgrades (which need to be mirrored in the content of the information product) and the gain of staff experience. Initially the interactive maintenance manual for the European ALMA Antennas was prepared following the standard S1000D. The interactive version was expected to ease the process of creating consistent, and uniform information and to ease user access, compared to more conservative solutions. In this paper we evaluate the application limits of the commissioned maintenance manual following S1000D that caused lacking user acceptance and therefore ESO’s expectations not being fulfilled. The process of developing the new approach tailored to both, the use-cases on field and the creation and agile maintainability in-house, is explained. Taking the analyzed use-cases and user inputs into consideration we present the strategy of updating the maintenance manual in a way that guarantees short document lifecycles and streamlined maintainability inside the organization. In particular, the involvement of the target groups throughout the process preparing the effective launch of the new release are highlighted. The modular workflow to create the maintenance manual focuses on granular content reuse from one single source which is maintained centralized internally. In addition to the workflow, also the tool for the manual creation, Adobe FrameMaker, is described. Finally, we show the beneficial influence of the new maintenance manual release on the running operations of the European ALMA Antennas and discuss potential application cases.

The Sardinia Radio Telescope is a 64-metre radio telescope operated by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). It is a general purpose instrument with frequency agility and wide frequency coverage. Operations can be represented as a continuous ow of actions that must be taken in charge by the team, with the goal to minimize the downtime an maximize the scientific outcome of the facility. Also, operating partly in guest mode, the overall satisfaction of the observers is a goal to be achieved. Following the Agile principles derived from software development, we intend to implement a Kanban approach. Hence, we will identify internal sectors as a series of manifolds of client-producer chain, and monitor the workflow with kanban-like tickets. An electronic version of Kanban will enable coordinators to have an at-a-glance view of the critical points.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an ambitious project to build the world's largest radio observatory. The Observatory will construct two telescopes: a low-frequency array (50-350 MHz) in Australia and a mid-frequency array (0:35 - 15 GHz) in South Africa. The Global Headquarters for the SKA is located at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK. Once in steady-state operations, the SKA will have one of the largest data rates of any research infrastructure in the world. This paper describes the operational model for the SKA and the challenges faced by its globally distributed operations. The paper presents the modelling undertaken to better understand the workforce required to support the engineering operations and maintenance of the telescopes, and how the Observatory will interact and interface with a global network of SKA Regional Centres to support its scientific users.

The new scientific discoveries that will be made by MeerKAT are both exciting and unknown. However, it is precisely the unknown that carries the most risk, and requires scientific software development strategies to help mitigate these risks. Additionally, MeerKAT, like other large telescopes, is a complex instrument that entered a phase of parallel science-observation/engineering-development soon after initial commissioning. This adds to the burden of the observational software development, requiring not only scientific observations, but also engineering support. All of which must be achieved in a robust implementation that can be rapidly updated with minimal programming, remain maintainable and evolve seamlessly without interrupting the telescope science operations. Through an evolutionary process, starting with the KAT-7 prototype, modular software libraries have been developed for MeerKAT, making it easy to implement the higher level AstroKAT observation framework to accommodate the MeerKAT operational needs. This modular implementation enabled AstroKAT to support both science and engineering observations transparently, by extending the operational code base to adapt functionality depending on the system-level libraries it finds available. The result of this is a single, configurable, software implementation that can be used all the way from the observation planning phase up to executing observation scripts on the MeerKAT telescope live system.

The SKA requires a comprehensive suite of applications to be prototyped in the current 'bridging' phase ahead of the formal start of construction, leading to full development in the subsequent construction phase. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe R) has become an industry standard process for managing the development of large software systems, defining a set of processes to manage and coordinate the activity of multiple agile software development teams. SAFe has been adopted by the SKA, and is being used to coordinate a large number of globally distributed agile development teams; including the team developing prototypes of the Observatory Science Operation (OSO) applications. Much of the team who developed the OSO design for Critical Design Review (CDR) are now involved in the agile development of the OSO tools, and with the shift to SAFe development have a unique view on how to develop within SAFe from a plan that was developed anticipating a traditional waterfall software development process. Here we present an overview of how evolutionary prototypes of these tools (from proposal handling and assessment, through to observation design, planning, scheduling and execution) are being developed for the SKA within SAFe.

The steady state operational availability and resources modelled for Square Kilometre Array (SKA) assume that necessary engineering operations systems are in place and can be effectively managed. The trend however is for this state to be reached only many years after Telescope commissioning. Implementation gaps in engineering operations cost working time and can be particularly hard to resolve during operations. The pre-cursor histories and lessons learned offer knowledge and opportunity to mitigate. The paper explores challenges and opportunities for SKA engineering operations establishment. It discusses focus areas for early effort to build on the achievements and improve on challenges experienced by pre-cursor Telescopes.

To achieve the data quantity and quality required by increasingly demanding science drivers astronomical facilities have grown in size and complexity. This trend not only creates new challenges for technological aspects, but also creates the need for an advanced operations management approach to effectively and efficiently operate and maintain these large facilities throughout their life-cycle. In the context of astronomical observatories, operations management usually involves processes that are related to science operations, maintenance management, obsolescence, upgrades, enhancement, quality assurance, planning, and performance monitoring, among others. Starting with the experience acquired at the ALMA observatory, this paper presents the authors' thoughts on new factors and on apparent differences with respect to operations management of traditional large observatory facilities; and how these new challenges could be addressed via best practices and what the related key concepts are. The methodology used is to first identify those areas that contribute to increased complexity or more stringent operational constraints, in order to elaborate on possible resolution strategies. Rather than aiming at delivering turnkey solutions, this paper is intended to explore the interest within the community to gather and validate related operations management concepts and "best practices" in a collaborative manner.

The space missions TESS and PLATO plan to double the number of 4000 exoplanets already discovered and will measure the size of thousands of exoplanets around the brightest stars in the sky, allowing ground-based radial velocity spectroscopy follow-up to determine the orbit and mass of the detected planets. The new facility we are developing, MARVEL (Raskin et al. this conference¹ ), will enable the ground-based follow-up of large numbers of exoplanet detections expected from TESS and PLATO, which cannot be carried out only by the current facilities that achieve the necessary radial velocity accuracy of 1 ms^-1 or less. This paper presents the MARVEL observation strategy and performance analysis based on predicted PLATO transit detection yield simulations. The resulting observation scenario baseline will help in the instrument design choices and demonstrate the effectiveness of MARVEL as a TESS and PLATO science enabling facility.

Most telescope proposal science cases are governed by the need to achieve a given SNR (Signal-to-noise ratio). However, traditionally telescopes award applicants a certain number of hours rather than an SNR or noise. Noise calculators cannot solve this problem entirely, due to variations in weather, elevation and instrument performance when an observation is actually carried out. The JCMT is currently shifting towards awarding users (when appropriate) a given RMS towards their source/s instead of a time spent observing, initially for our new 230 GHz instrument Ū ū. The JCMT already had many necessary parts of this process in place (noise calculators, a robust ‘live’ pipeline, and an extremely flexible queue based system). This presentation describes our efforts to start implementing this process for our users, discusses the necessary systems and software required, and describes the lessons applicable for other observatories.

With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope planned for the fall of 2021, the Space Telescope Science Institute continues preparation of the planning and scheduling ground system. After a series of Science Operations Rehearsals, we have confirmed that the Proposal Planning System is ready for ingest of the JWST Early Release Science, Guaranteed Time Observations, calibrations, and the Cycle 1 Guest Observer science programs. The Proposal Planning System consists of multiple sub-components; here, we focus on three of them: the Visit Planning System, the Visit Scheduling System, and the Observation Plan Generation System.

In the age of Large Programs and Big Data a key component in project planning for ground-based astronomical observatories is understanding how to balance users demands and telescope capabilities. In particular, future planning for operations requires us to assess the impact of a complex set of parameters, such as right ascension, instrument, and sky condition pressures over coming semesters. Increased understanding of these parameters can provide: improved scientific output, better management of user expectations, more accurate advertised/allocated time under a Call for Proposals, and improved scheduling for instrumental commissioning and engineering work. We present ongoing efforts by staff at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) to build a tool to provide automated completion forecasting of Large Programs undertaken at this telescope, which make up 50% of the observing time available at the JCMT.

The Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF’s NOIRLab, provides the astronomical communities in five participant countries with state-of-the-art astronomical facilities that allocate observing time in proportion to each country's contribution. In this paper we present an overview of the Gemini International Time Allocation Committee (ITAC) process whose purpose is to merge the successful proposals to create a single combined list of programs for execution on the two Gemini telescopes. The process of merging the successful programs from the National Time Allocation Committee (NTAC) is a complex process with many variables and considerations. This paper describes in detail the how-to (at the time of writing) of the main goals of the process, which are fairness and efficiency; ensuring that the telescopes are being used efficiently, and are never sitting idle when they could be executing a program of interest for one of the participants, as well as the users from the communities are not wasting time writing filler proposals that will never get executed. The success of this process is measured in executing the maximum number of highly ranked scientific programs within these constraints.

Users of the La Silla Paranal Observatory have to rely on the ESO Exposure Time Calculator (ETC) to prepare their observations. A project has been started at ESO to modernise the ETC, based on a python backend and an angular-based front-end. The ETC 2.0 will have a programmatic interface to enable the results to be included in an automated quality control loop and to communicate with the Phase 1 proposal preparation and the Phase 2 observation preparation tools, the ESO science archive, as well as with scripts runs by external users or instruments. The first version of an ETC 2.0 has been released for the 4MOST instrument and further versions will be released over the next years for all new La Silla, VLT and ELT instruments. The ETC of the current La Silla and VLT instruments will also be migrated progressively, with improved instrument description.

RACS2 (Remote Autonomous Control System V2) is a special distributed control system for telescope control. In order to complete the heavy and complex observation task in astronomical observation, RACS2 fully considered the modular design and extensible design at the beginning of design, which has the characteristics of decentralization and automatic component discovery. The bottom layer of RACS2 is written in modern C + + language, which provides rich scalability. In addition, RACS2 also provides full-featured Python interface binding, which is convenient for modular management of device components. Aiming at the actual process of telescope automatic observation, RACS2 has designed three modules: task management module, task execution module and log management module. These three modules correspond to the three components of RACS2, including Scheduler, Executor and Logger, which covering the creation, management, execution and recording of observation tasks, so that RACS2 can meet the complex astronomical observation requirements.

Up to now, the completion of an ALMA interferometric observation is determined based on the achievement of a given shape and size of the synthesized beam and the noise RMS in the representative spectral range. This approach with respect to the angular resolution investigates mainly the longest baselines of the interferometer and says little about the sensitivity at larger angular scales. We are exploring the ideas of angular-scale-based scheduling and quality assessment, and of angular-scale-based visibility weighting as a step towards optimising both observation efficiency and image fidelity. This approach carries the imaging quality assurance into the visibility space, where interferometers record the data, and therefore simplifies many aspects of the procedure. Similarly during scheduling such detailed assessment of the expected imaging properties helps optimising the scheduling process. The methodology is applicable to all radio interferometers with more than ca. 10 antennas.

Planning astronomy observations for telescopes is a very hard problem as it must deal with fully automatic operation, and dynamic rescheduling of observations based on changes in weather conditions, source visibility, technical failures, etc. Unlike state-of-the-art scheduling methods, planning observations requires intensive work to adapt the observation plans to the changing conditions of observation projects. Furthermore, some schedulers that use machine learning techniques require complex sample data of observation sequences, which are usually not available for most of the astronomy telescopes. In addition, since traditional scheduling methods are unable to self-organize, they usually require effort to optimize system parameters. In order to address these issues, in this work a new method is proposed to schedule astronomy observations projects. The approach uses artificial immune systems techniques in order to optimize observation plans and available resources according to real-time scientific priorities. Experiments using real and synthetic data on observation proposals and weather information, show the promise of the method when compared with traditional scheduling algorithms. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is the biggest radio-interferometer telescope constructed in the Chilean Atacama desert. The scheduling system for ALMA considers a full automatic operation, and a dynamic re-scheduling of observations according to changing factors, like atmospheric conditions, source visibility, technical failures or targets of opportunity. This article proposes a new scheduling algorithm for ALMA based on immune system. It is verified against real data and focused in define a metric based on quality of the scientific output and instrument usage in a real world problem.

NEID is an optical, fiber-fed, precision Doppler radial-velocity spectrometer system located at the WIYN 3.5 meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, intended for open-access use within the US national community. NEID was designed to achieve 50 cm/s or better radial velocity precision, permitting the characterization of terrestrial mass exoplanets orbiting host stars identified by recent NASA missions such as TESS. NEID will be used during 40-50% of all observing time at WIYN and will operate in a queue scheduled mode. The NEID queue will enable astronomers to make frequent adjustments to their individual observing programs within the NEID queue. NEID's observing constraints were developed with high-precision RV exoplanet studies as the primary use case, but enable a variety of observing schemes. Here, we describe the scheduling and queue algorithms and how queue users can configure their programs to meet science goals.

Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) is the first of the future generation of massively multiplexed spectroscopic 11.25m mirror facility on a recycled site. MSE is designed to enable transformative science, being completely dedicated to large-scale multi-object spectroscopic surveys, each studying thousands to millions of astrophysical objects. MSE’s transformational potential lies in answering numerous scientific questions and finding new puzzles. Its success will depend in part on its ability to detect large populations of faint sources, from those responsible for reionization to merging galaxies at cosmic dawn and the stellar populations of nearby dwarf galaxies. This capability is set, in part, by our ability to remove the sky from the target spectra. Here we describe the initial steps in a threeyear long effort to develop a model of the Maunakea skies comparable to the model developed by ESO of the southern ESO sites. The model will be used to derive best-practices (e.g. the number of required fibers given specific observing conditions, and required sensitivity) and sky subtraction algorithms to achieve << 1% sky subtraction accuracy

Correction of telluric absorption lines is important during the data reduction of spectroscopic observations of astronomical targets. The popular tool Molecfit^{1, 2} creates synthetic telluric transmission spectra based on the LBLRTM radiative transfer code³ , the HITRAN database4 , available atmospheric profiles (temperature, humidity, pressure variation with altitude), and instrumental line spread functions. Significantly improved accuracy is reached by using atmospheric profiles obtained at the same time and location as the science observations. For 9 years, a Low Humidity And Temperature Profiling (LHATPRO) Radiometer has provided profiles towards zenith every minute at Paranal. In 2019 line-of-sight support was added with the radiometer slaved to each telescope in sequence. This approach allows blind correction of water vapor telluric lines, provided some conditions are met, reducing the need to observe telluric stars.

Knowledge about the external environmental conditions on science data quality is an essential aspect of midinfrared ground-based observations. Before science observations are taken, a standard star must be observed to assess the sky transparency and background, which leads to significant telescope overhead. With data collected by NACO and VISIR instruments in L', M' and N-bands at Paranal, we perform a multivariate correlation analysis between the sky counts and different external conditions (i.e. precipitable water vapour, airmass, humidity and thickness of the dust deposition layer on the main mirror). Using machine learning methods to analyse multiple regression data, we show that knowledge of the external conditions can predict correctly the background sky emission at the relevant wavelengths to within 2-5%. The use of the skycalc tool to verify the predicted background is also briefly described. Our findings have important implications for the operations of the current and future VLT and ELT instruments operating at mid-infrared wavelengths.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the workplace are essential to the success of a functioning observatory. The current climate among astronomical institutions with regards to EDI efforts is receptive. However, workplace demographics data, internal climate surveys among observatories, and representation in academic partnerships illustrate the strong need to strengthen efforts in EDI. Concrete initiatives are facilitated by strategic planning, solid goal setting, and accountability metrics. Astronomical facilities, managing entities, and their academic partners must have EDI as a central role of their operations in order to achieve and exceed their scientific goals, and to address the ongoing inequity that is strife in international astronomy. Since June of 2018, efforts of EDI have continued at facilities managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), and goals have been established to implement the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategic plan for the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Laboratory (NOIRlab) that was announced October 1, 2019. The objectives of this paper are: 1) to briefly overview studies illustrating the successes of EDI efforts, 2) discuss the current demographics of AURA and National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) employees, 3) to review the framework of inclusive organizations, 4) to describe the activities of grassroots EDI initiatives at AURA facilities since June of 2018, and 5) to discuss the process of writing the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategic plan for NOIRlab. A report on the current status and important details from the process are presented.

After 16.5 years the Spitzer Space Telescope was decommissioned on 30Jan2020. We present a look at the legacy of Spitzer: the 9200+ papers that have used data from the telescope and are catalogued in the Spitzer Bibliographical Database. Over the lifetime of this Great Observatory, cryogenic depletion and budget constraints brought on operational changes that in turn impacted the publication rates. This paper looks into the differences in publication rates between the Spitzer cryogenic and warm missions, and identifies those fields on the sky with especially high data reuse rates and many papers. In addition it provides a look into the citations of Spitzer fundamental papers, as well as how well authors identified the data they used. From data that were used once, to data that were used many times; the legacy of the Spitzer mission continues to grow even after the data collection has finished, and its full impact will not be known for years to come.

The TMT Early-Career Initiative (TECI) is an innovative, evolving program designed to support inclusion in the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) International Observatory (TIO) by engaging graduate students and postdocs in TIO projects, and preparing them with skills required to contribute to the project and advance in their careers. TECI has an annual cycle that begins with a workshop that includes project management, instrument design, and teamwork sessions, and engages participants in projects that could lead to visits and new collaborations. Project teams are led by the participants themselves, who consult with a member of the relevant technical team or project staff. In this paper we describe the components of TECI, our approach to designing it, and outcomes from our early piloting in 2016-17, as well as our first full program in 2018-19.

Euclid is an ESA M-class mission to study the geometry and nature of the dark universe, slated for launch in mid-2022. NASA is participating in the mission through the contribution of the near-infrared detectors and associated electronics, the nomination of scientists for membership in the Euclid Consortium, and by establishing the Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC (ENSCI) to support the US community. As part of ENSCI’s work, we will participate in the Euclid Science Ground Segment (SGS) and build and operate the US Science Data Center (SDC-US), which will be a node in the distributed data processing system for the mission. SDC-US is one of 10 data centers, and will contribute about 5% of the computing and data storage for the distributed system. We discuss lessons learned in developing a node in a distributed system. For example, there is a significant advantage to SDC-US development in sharing of knowledge, problem solving, and resource burden with other parts of the system. On the other hand, fitting into a system that is distributed geographically and relies on diverse computing environments results in added complexity in constructing SDC-US.

How do you use modern web technologies to build a user-friendly browser-based data archive? We answer this question for the data archive of the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) and Southern African Large Telescope, which lets users make complex searches, view FITS files and make data requests. The software stack includes React, NodeJS, GraphQL and PostgreSQL. The archive is hosted on virtual Ubuntu servers. The development workflow uses tools like Github Actions, Reviewable and Prettier. The archive forms part of the SAAO's artificial intelligence based approach to observing.

The International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) has developed and built, in the last two decades, an ecosystem of distributed resources, interoperable and based upon open shared technological standards. In doing so the IVOA has anticipated, putting into practice for the astrophysical domain, the ideas of FAIR-ness of data and service resources and the Open-ness of sharing scientific results, leveraging on the underlying open standards required to fill the above. In Europe, efforts in supporting and developing the ecosystem proposed by the IVOA specifications has been provided by a continuous set of EU funded projects up to current H2020 ESCAPE ESFRI cluster. In the meantime, in the last years, Europe has realised the importance of promoting the Open Science approach for the research communities and started the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) project to create a distributed environment for research data, services and communities. In this framework the European VO community, had to face the move from the interoperability scenario in the astrophysics domain into a larger audience perspective that includes a cross-domain FAIR approach. Within the ESCAPE project the CEVO Work Package (Connecting ESFRI to EOSC through the VO) has one task to deal with this integration challenge: a challenge where an existing, mature, distributed e-infrastructure has to be matched to a forming, more general architecture. CEVO started its works in the first months of 2019 and has already worked on the integration of the VO Registry into the EOSC e-infrastructure. This contribution reports on the first year and a half of integration activities, that involve applications, services and resources being aware of the VO scenario and compatible with the EOSC architecture. Within the H2020 ESCAPE project, the "CEVO" WP has one task to deal with this challenge of integrating an existing, mature, distributed e-infrastructure to a forming, more general one. CEVO has already worked on the integration of the VO Registry into the EOSC e-infrastructure. This contribution reports on the full first year of integration acitivities.

ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is the world's largest ground-based facility for observations in the millimeter/submillimeter regime. One of ALMA's outstanding characteristics is the large effort dedicated to the quality assurance (QA) of the calibrated and imaged data products offered to the astronomical community. The Data Management Group (DMG), in charge of the data processing, review, and delivery of the ALMA data, consists of approximately 60 experts in data reduction, from the ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs) and the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO), distributed in fourteen countries. With a throughput of more than 3,000 datasets per year, meeting the goal of delivering the pipeline-able data products within 30 days after data acquisition is a huge challenge. This paper presents (a) the history of data processing at ALMA, (b) the challenges our team had and is still facing, (c) the methodology followed to mitigate the operational risks, (d) the ongoing optimization initiatives, (e) the current data processing status, (f) the strategy which is being followed so that, in a few Cycles from now, a team of approximately 10 data reducers (DRs) at JAO can process and review some 80% of the datasets collected during an observing cycle, and, finally, (g) the important role of the ARCs for processing the remaining datasets.

After eight observing Cycles, the Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA) is capable of observing in eight different bands (covering a frequency range from 84 to 950 GHz), with 66 antennas and two correlators. For the current Cycle (7), ALMA offers up to 4300 hours for the 12-m array, and 3000 hours on both the 7-m of the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) and TP Array plus 750 hours in a supplemental call. From the customer perspective (i.e., the astronomical community), ALMA is an integrated product service provider, i.e. it observes in service mode, processes and delivers the data obtained. The Data Management Group (DMG) is in charge of the processing, reviewing, and delivery of the ALMA data and consists of approximately 60 experts in data reduction, from the ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs) and the Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO), distributed in fourteen countries. Prior to their delivery, the ALMA data products go through a thorough quality assurance (QA) process, so that the astronomers can work on their science without the need of significant additional calibration re-processing. Currently, around 90% of the acquired data is processed with the ALMA pipeline (the so called pipeline-able data), while the remaining 10% is processed completely manually. The Level-1 Key Performance Indicator set by the Observatory to DMG is that 90% of the pipeline-able data sets (i.e. some 80% of the data sets observed during an observing cycle) must be processed, reviewed and delivered within 30 days of data acquisition. This paper describes the methodology followed by the JAO in order to process near 80% of the total data observed during Cycle 7, a giant leap with respect to approximately 30% in Cycle 4 (October 2016 - September 2017).

Wide field small aperture telescopes (WFSATs) are commonly used for fast sky survey. Telescope arrays composed by several WFSATs are capable to scan sky several times per night. Huge amount of data would be obtained by them and these data need to be processed immediately. In this paper, we propose ARGUS (Astronomical taRGets detection framework for Unified telescopes) for real-time transit detection. The ARGUS uses a deep learning based astronomical detection algorithm implemented in embedded devices in each WFSATs to detect astronomical targets. The position and probability of a detection being an astronomical targets will be sent to a trained ensemble learning algorithm to output information of celestial sources. After matching these sources with star catalog, ARGUS will directly output type and positions of transient candidates. We use simulated data to test the performance of ARGUS and find that ARGUS can increase the performance of WFSATs in transient detection tasks robustly.

Identification of optical counterparts of gravitational waves (GWs) is one of the most exciting topics in astronomy. Since a typical sky map error region of the LIGO/Virgo is much larger than the field-of-view of optical telescopes, it is important to search and rapidly identify optical counterparts through follow-up observation by optical telescopes. The method of rapid and accurate transient detection in huge set of observed images is important. Motivated by this, we are developing transient detection method with convolutional neural network (CNN). We constructed CNN-based classifier designed to separate a transient image, an image including a transient source, and non-transient image. The input data is a pair of an observed image and a reference image. Here we adopt an image taken by MITSuME 50 cm telescope as observed and Pan-STARRS image as reference. We trained it with more than 10,000 images of 77 background galaxies within 200 Mpc. The training data with artificially transient images is made by adding an artificial point source into an observed image with various positions and luminosities. We tested the performance of the classifier with test data and found that the classification accuracy is more than 90%. Furthermore, we are developing a high-speed image reduction pipeline with GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) for real-time analysis of observed images. To accelerate image reduction, the pipeline uses CuPy (a python library for numerical calculation on the GPU) and minimize fits I/O. We found that the reduction speed of the pipeline achieves 30 times faster than IRAF for 240 set of 1024 x 1024 pixel images. In this talk, we will introduce the current status of the development of the transient detection method and the GPU-accelerated image reduction pipeline. We will also introduce our plan of installation of them into the systems of MITSuME 50cm telescopes in Akeno and Okayama which have performed optical follow-up observations of gamma-ray bursts, gravitational waves and X-ray binaries.

Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) is the first of the future generation of massively multiplexed spectroscopic facilities. MSE is designed to enable transformative science, being completely dedicated to large-scale multi-object spectroscopic surveys, each studying thousands to millions of astrophysical objects. MSE uses an 11.25 m aperture telescope to feed 4,332 fibers over a wide 1.52 square degree field of view. It will have the capabilities to observe at a range of spectral resolutions, from R~3,000 to R~40,000, with all spectral resolutions available at all times and across the entire field. As a dedicated survey facility, MSE must be able to efficiently execute a wide variety of scientific programs at the same time. Here we describe plans to execute MSE’s Design Reference Survey, an exercise to plan for and simulate a sample of potential first-generation science programs that exercise the design parameters of the spectroscopic facility and identify any performance and functional deficiencies of the MSE Observatory. With this exercise we have begun to lay out a detailed plan of how to schedule and execute observations, including calibration data, in the first five years of the MSE project.

With the avalanche of alerts to be delivered by Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time and the limited resources for follow-up, we will need brokers to select intriguing alerts that warrant follow-up in a timely manner. At NSF's NOIRLab and University of Arizona, we are developing the Arizona-NOIRLab Temporal Analysis and Response to Events System (ANTARES, Saha et al. 2014, 2016, Narayan et al. 2018), to hunt for the rarest of the rare events in the time domain. In this work, we provide an overview of the ANTARES system, how we use real-time alerts from the ongoing Zwicky Transient Facility survey as a training set, and the way forwards to Rubin observatory.

Astrophysical phenomena occur on a range of timescales, and to properly characterize them, observations must be made at appropriate intervals on instrumentation determined by the scientific goals of the study. The traditional model of scheduling telescope time in blocks of consecutive nights and requiring the investigators to operate the instrument (either in person or remotely) is not optimal for this science. A queue-scheduled approach to time allocation can relieve the personal and financial burden of interactive observing runs. This is particularly powerful when requests for observations can be made through a programmatic interface, which provides not just a convenient tool for all astronomy programs, but also the opportunity to build fully automated observing programs. This will be an essential component of projects making follow-up observations for modern surveys that produce millions of alerts per night, as much of the science return will depend upon obtaining classification and characterization data rapidly and efficiently, as well as for coordination of observations across multiple facilities. The AEON Network is an initiative to build a programmatically accessible, queue-scheduled and user driven network of telescopes ideal for modern astronomical observing programs.

Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) is the only dedicated, >10 m class, multi-object facility under development on the best site in the Northern Hemisphere. MSE is designed to simultaneously obtain 4,332 spectra in three resolution modes in the optical and NIR. The design attributes of a wide field of view, a high multiplex capability, and the use of optical fibers to transport the light from the prime focus to two suites of spectrographs, mandate an efficient and precise science calibration process to account for the throughput and imaging variations between the astronomical targets at the detectors. To achieve MSE's science goals, the calibration process must enable accurate sky subtraction, wavelength correction, and spectrophotometry. In this paper, we continue our discussion on the science calibration requirements and procedures, and provide an update to the adopted calibration strategy, including likely operational features and hardware. This paper particularly focuses on two new aspects of MSE analysis, ghost behavior of the wide field corrector and the possible impact of satellite constellations on MSE observations.

In Las Cumbres Observatory’s global network, the 1-meter telescopes are in greatest demand. Beginning in 2019, we undertook an investigation into the focus stability of these telescopes. We also refined the procedures for setting and maintaining optimal focus. The investigation showed the sensitivity of the telescopes’ optical components to temperature variations. The temperatures within the domes, as well as along the telescopes, are rarely stable for the first 80-120 minutes of science observations. A consequence is that start-of-night focus corrections must later be countered by additional corrections after thermalization. We report the various improvements to telescope focus that our investigation has spawned. The start-of-night focus corrections are now made immediately before science observations begin. Focus checks are now monitored during the night and trigger actionable alerts if they fail. Finally, we report on our effort to use the guide cameras as real-time focus sensors.

Elasticsearch is one of solutions to monitor and analyze logs. Even with ALMA∗, observation logs are stored and anyone can look into it according to their purpose. For example, Hastings, which is a tool discovers the root cause of the defect, is utilized for ACA Correlator subsystem†. It queries logs to an ALMA Elasticsearch storing operational logs, analyzes specific messages which infer troubles, then outputs a result. Before the ALMA Elasticsearch was deployed, logs should have been collected manually in advance. Now the ALMA Elasticsearch has become available and we’ve known: 1) Elasticsearch can directly configure and access features by using REST API, 2) Logs taken even years ago can also be retrieved easily, 3) Elasticsearch’s major update didn’t cause much loss of time to change Hastings, 4) Python has several methods to manage Elasticsearch so that we can choose a favorite one. Therefore, we thought to apply Elasticsearch to the Subaru telescope‡. Size of Subaru logs are quite large but they are not stored in any database yet and just archived. We created a cluster system with Elasticsearch for the evaluation purpose and found ways to store data in a short time. We estimated the total ingestion time for 20 years of telescope status data to be at most 5 months. Our goal is to find a feasible cause of any defects in near real time, to predict any errors that may occur in near future, and to analyze communication between the telescope and observational equipment to optimize observations.

Some of optical telescopes and millimeter- and submillimeter-wave telescopes are constructed on the top of the mountains which are higher than 4,000 meters above sea level, in order to prevent light from absorbing and diffusing and to avoid the influence of bad weather. These telescopes can observe light under much better condition in comparison to that on level ground, however, there are issues that labor efficiency is decreased by the low air pressure (less than two thirds of that on level ground) and the snowsuit and gloves which make difficult to move the body and fingers. Also, in case of a trouble, it may delay the initial response because of altitude and far distance from the base, so, as a result of this, the observation schedule may be forced to change. To solve these problems, we Mitsubishi Electric Corp. are tackling on development of the remote-controlled robot system which can make the labor efficiency in highland similar to that on level ground and minimize the traveling time to move the workers to the sites. In this paper, we introduce overview of the developed remote-controlled robot "DiaroiDTM" which can substitute the labor's work in the sites, and several demonstrations which the robot performed with this remotecontrolled robot and its control system are introduced.

Wide field photometric surveys aim at observing large areas of sky in various filters. Yet, almost all surveys use constant exposure times, regardless of the quality of the images or the level of background, mostly due to the moon, which may result in a lack of homogeneity in the data sets. In the J-PLUS survey,1 modulating the exposure time with the sky background has resulted not only in an improved homogeneity of the data but also in a significant improvement of the efficiency of the survey execution. In this paper, we show the effect on J-PAS and J-PLUS of using fixed exposure times, regardless of the Moon background, and we describe the system to estimate this background reliably and provide a significant improvement, not only in the quality of the observations, but also in the survey speed.

The World Space Observatory - Ultraviolet is a space telescope project with valuable observation time. In the article we describe scheduling optimisation basing on the idempotent algebra approach. The setting of the problem is defined. Previous solutions of the general optimisation goal are mentioned as well.

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is located on the island of Maui, Hawai'i. The DKIST is a 4-meter clear-aperture solar telescope nearing the end of its construction phase in 2021. Following construction there will be a one year Operations Commissioning Phase (OCP). The OCP allows for early observing opportunities, while at the same time, fine-tuning systems and procedures, in preparation for DKIST steadystate operations in 2022. During the OCP, the DKIST Science Operations Specialists (SOSs, a.k.a. Telescope Operators) will execute validated solar observing programs as instructed by Resident Scientists while coordinating with maintenance and engineering activities. DKIST maintenance and engineering tasks are performed by the technical operations staff sharing time during daylight with science operations, which is an entirely different scenario than for nighttime ground-based observatories. Presented here is a summary of the year leading up to the OCP from the perspective of the DKIST SOS group. We present the training planned for the current SOS group and how this folds into the DKIST’s still ongoing Integration, Testing and Commissioning phase. We are developing an efficient training program to reduce the overall training time. We also discuss the tools which assist the current SOS group in writing and generating shift schedules, procedures, checklists, and workflows.

The concepts for future exoplanet direct imaging missions plan to employ schedules that allow for observations to be moved during the mission. This creates chances for an observatory to image an exoplanet multiple times and to image exoplanets discovered by other observatories after the mission begins. For example, the HabEx and LUVOIR missions have a partially dynamic schedules, beginning with a series of predetermined observations whose outcome sets the schedule of followup observations. An orbital fit can be created for an exoplanet that has been observed by other observatories, which helps determine when it will be observable again. However, these fits have uncertainties that propagate in time. We show simulations demonstrating how these errors propagate and compare different methods of estimating when a planet will be visible.

Every night the VST Telescope Control Software logs large text files including information on the telescope and instrument operations, executed commands, failures, weather conditions and anything is relevant for the instrument maintenance and the identification of problem sources. These log files are a precious tool, daily used by the observatory personnel for the analysis of any issue raised by the telescope operators during the night. One of the most frequent use of these data is then to trace back telescope, instrument or enclosure problem sources and analyze them. Consequently, these _les are often analyzed looking only for specific issues and for solving well identified problems, in the framework of dedicated and focused efforts. Thus, a minimal part of the information is useful for this kind of daily maintenance. Nevertheless, the log files contain a gold mine of other data, which often make sense only when analyzed on a long time span. This paper describes a 5-year effort, started in 2015, for the systematic collection and analysis of log files, aiming at the identification of useful long-term trends and statistics which are normally overlooked in the daily telescope life. The specific case of the active optics open-loop corrections is discussed as case study.

We describe the preliminary results of a ground-based observing campaign aimed at building a grid of approximately 200 spectro-photometric standard stars (SPSS), with an internal ≅1% accuracy (and sub-percent precision), tied to CALSPEC Vega and Sirius systems within ≅1%, for the absolute flux calibration of data gathered by Gaia, the European Space Agency (ESA) astrometric mission. The criteria for the selection and a list of candidates are presented, together with a description of the survey's strategy and the adopted data analysis methods. All candidates were also monitored for constancy (within ±5 mmag, approximately). The present version of the grid contains about half of the final sample, it has already reached the target accuracy but the precision will substantially improve with future releases. It will be used to calibrate the Gaia (E)DR3 release of spectra and photometry.

We present an archive system named "Adria", which have been developed and maintained by ALMA project team of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). Adria aims to store and open to the public various science data. Adria is composed of an object storage to store the observation data, the access control by "ticket", JSON format metadata, JavaScript APIs and html documents. The combination has the advantages of flexibility and solidity, which are important to store various telescope data in the same platform and to be maintained with small cost for a long time. Firstly, we have applied Adria to the observation data (since July 2013) of Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO) 45m, and then we have added the data (since June 2019) of Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) to the same platform.