Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre: observation scheduler and sequencer
Observational strategy is a critical path in any large survey. The
planning of a night requires the knowledge of the fields observed, the
quality of the data already secured, and the ones still to be observed
to optimize scientific returns. Finally, field maximum altitude, sky
distance/brightness during the night and meteorological data (cloud
coverage and seeing) have to be taken into account in order to increase
the chance to have a successful observation. To support the execution of
the J-PAS project at the Javalambre Astrophysical Observatory, we have
prepared a scheduler and a sequencer (SCH/SQ) which takes into account
all the relevant mentioned parameters. The scheduler first selects the
fields which can be observed during the night and orders them on the
basis of their figure of merit. It takes into account the quality and
spectral coverage of the existing observations as well as the
possibility to get a good observation during the night. The sequencer
takes into account the meteorological variables in order to prepare the
observation queue for the night. During the commissioning of the
telescopes at OAJ, we expect to improve our figures of merit and
eventually get to a system which can function semi-automatically. This
poster describes the design of this software.