This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 8448, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, and Conference Committee listing.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is a major new interferometer operated on Llano de Chajnantor at 5050 m altitude in the Chilean high Andes. This location is considered one of the world's outstanding sites for submillimeter astronomy. ALMA is still under construction, but science observations has started already in what is commonly known as ALMA Early Science Cycle 0. The purpose of ALMA Early Science Cycle 0 is to deliver scientically useful results to the astronomy community and to facilitate the ongoing characterization of ALMA systems and instrumentation as the capability of the array continues to grow. Early Science will continue through Cycle 1 and until construction and commissioning of ALMA is complete. This publication aims to give an insight into the challenges we face operating telescope of this scale at Chajnantor, a plateau 4800{5100 meter above sea level in one of the driest places of earth. It also will also present statistics from the proposal submission, describe the path from an accepted proposal to a calibrated data product, and nally an outlook for the future.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Project has an extended integration and test (I&T) phase due to long procurement and development times of various components as well as recent launch delays. The JWST Ground Segment and Operations group has developed a roadmap of the various ground and flight elements and their use in the various JWST I&T test programs. The JWST Project's building block approach to the eventual operational systems, while not new, is complex and challenging; a large-scale mission like JWST involves international partners, many vendors across the United States, and competing needs for the same systems. One of the challenges is resource balancing so simulators and flight products for various elements congeal into integrated systems used for I&T and flight operations activities. This building block approach to an incremental buildup provides for early problem identification with simulators and exercises the flight operations systems, products, and interfaces during the JWST I&T test programs. The JWST Project has completed some early I&T with the simulators, engineering models and some components of the operational ground system. The JWST Project is testing the various flight units as they are delivered and will continue to do so for the entire flight and operational system. The JWST Project has already and will continue to reap the value of the building block approach on the road to launch and flight operations.

Euclid is the future ESA mission, mainly devoted to Cosmology. Like WMAP and Planck, it is a survey mission, to be launched in 2019 and injected in orbit far away from the Earth, for a nominal lifetime of 7 years. Euclid has two instruments on-board, the Visible Imager (VIS) and the Near- Infrared Spectro-Photometer (NISP). The NISP instrument includes cryogenic mechanisms, active thermal control, high-performance Data Processing Unit and requires periodic in-flight calibrations and instrument parameters monitoring. To fully exploit the capability of the NISP, a careful control of systematic effects is required. From previous experiments, we have built the concept of an integrated instrument development and verification approach, where the scientific, instrument and ground-segment expertise have strong interactions from the early phases of the project. In particular, we discuss the strong integration of test and calibration activities with the Ground Segment, starting from early pre-launch verification activities. We want to report here the expertise acquired by the Euclid team in previous missions, only citing the literature for detailed reference, and indicate how it is applied in the Euclid mission framework.

The science instruments on-board the Chandra X-ray Observatory may be damaged by high fluxes of energetic particles produced in Solar storms. For twelve years the on-board commanding used to safe the instruments when a high-radiation environment was identified included stopping all on-board scheduled activity. Over this time the conditions of the observatory have changed: the orbit has evolved to lower perigee and the thermal protective surfaces have degraded. The likelihood of an unplanned unload of spacecraft angular momentum, a spacecraft component exceeding thermal limits, or an eclipse passage without planned commanding occurring following a Solar storm during the upcoming Solarmaximum due to the lack of scheduled commanding led us to update the Chandra response to a high-radiation environment; commands are sent to safe the science instruments but vehicle related commanding (maneuvers, angularmomentum unloads, eclipse commands) are allowed to continue. While this was a conceptually simple change, it touched all elements of the program, including flight software, the planning and commanding systems, flight-load verification tools, and ground-based data processing. A key to successful and timely implementation was the establishment of a working group with representation from all elements of the program.

The observer program implementation, planning, and scheduling subsystems are undergoing software development for the James Webb Space Telescope front-end ground segment and are being tested in an integrated fashion. This part of the ground system leverages what was developed and fine-tuned for the Hubble Space Telescope over previous decades. This paper will describe the testing design, methods, results, plus the current capabilities and elements still to be developed for these subsystems through the time of publication. We will point out elements from Hubble's systems, from an operations perspective, which have been preserved for the new telescope, and those which require redevelopment.

Multi-object spectroscopy via custom slitmasks is a key capability on three instruments at the W. M. Keck Observatory. Before observers can acquire spectra they must complete a complex procedure to align each slit with its corresponding science target. We developed the Slitmask Alignment Tool (SAT), to replace a complex, inefficient, and error-prone slitmask alignment process that often resulted in lost sky time for novice and experienced observers alike. The SAT accomplishes rapid initial mask alignment, prevents field misidentification, accurately predicts alignment box image locations, corrects for flexure-induced image displacement, verifies the instrument and exposure configuration, and accommodates both rectangular and trapezoidal alignment box shapes. The SAT is designed to lead observers through the alignment process and coordinate image acquisition with instrument and telescope moves to improve efficiencies. By simplifying the process to just a few mouse clicks, the SAT enables even novice observers to achieve robust, efficient, and accurate alignment of slitmasks on all three Keck instruments supporting multislit spectroscopy, saving substantial observing time.

The ESO Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF) will transform UT4 of the VLT into a laser driven adaptive telescope in which the corrective optics, specifically the deformable secondary mirror, and the four Laser Guide Star units are integrated. Three instruments, with their own AO modules to provide field selection capabilities and wavefront sensing, will make use of this system to provide a variety of observing modes that span from large field IR imaging with GLAO, to integral field visible spectroscopy with both GLAO and LTAO, to SCAO high Strehl imaging and spectroscopy. Each of these observing modes carries its specific demands on observing conditions. Optimal use of telescope night-time, with such a high in demand and versatile instruments suite, is mandatory to maintain and even improve upon the scientific output of the facility. This implies that the standard VLT model for operations must be updated to cover these partly new demands. In particular, we discuss three key aspects: (1) the need for an upgrade of the site monitoring facilities to provide the operators with real-time information on the environmental conditions, including the ground layer strength, and their evolution throughout the night; (2) a set of tools and procedures to effectively use these data to optimize the short-term scheduling (i.e. with granularity of one night) of the telescope and (3) the upgrade of the current laser beam avoidance software to better cope with the AOF operational scheme, where the four laser units are continuously operated as long as the atmospheric conditions allow.

Accurate subtraction of the bright night sky emission lines in the near-infrared is crucial, given that the object being observed is often several magnitudes fainter than the sky background. Most integral field spectrographs (IFS) have a modest field of view (FoV), and it is often not possible to achieve good sky subtraction by nodding the object within the FoV, as is common practice for long slit spectrographs. In principle, it should be possible to use sky background information from one part of the FoV (typically the periphery) to subtract the sky from all other parts of the IFS FoV. However, this has never been achieved in practice. We show that the reason on-IFU sky subtraction does not work is that the spectrograph spectral response function (line spread function, or LSF) varies strongly with wavelength, position within the field of view, and telescope pointing (flexure). By micro-stepping the grating of the SINFONI IFS at the ESO-VLT, we have been able to hyper-sample the spectral PSF and reconstruct detailed LSF profiles for all wavelengths and all field points for SINFONI H band data. Using this information, we can conclusively demonstrate improvements in observing efficiency by over a factor of two. Our technique not only removes the need for separate sky exposures, but can also improve the noise of the sky background measurement itself, providing further potential gain over pairwise frame subtraction. We explain our algorithms, including non-parametric descriptions of the LSF, and present the results from applying our method to archival SINFONI data.

The development of instrumental and computer technologies is connected with steadily increasing needs for archiving of large data volumes. The current trend to meet this requirement includes the data compression and growth of storage capacities. This approach, however, has technical and practical limits. A further reduction of the archived data volume can be achieved by means of an optimisation of the archiving that consists in data selection without losing the useful information. We describe a method of optimised archiving of solar images, based on the selection of images that contain a new information. The new information content is evaluated by means of the analysis of changes detected in the images. We present characteristics of different kinds of image changes and divide them into fictitious changes with a disturbing effect and real changes that provide a new information. In block diagrams describing the selection and archiving, we demonstrate the influence of clouds, the recording of images during an active event on the Sun, including a period before the event onset, and the archiving of long-term history of solar activity. The described optimisation technique is not suitable for helioseismology, because it does not conserve the uniform time step in the archived sequence and removes the information about solar oscillations. In case of long-term synoptic observations, the optimised archiving can save a large amount of storage capacities. The actual capacity saving will depend on the setting of the change-detection sensitivity and on the capability to exclude the fictitious changes.

The user support model at the ING telescopes has evolved considerably over the last 20 years, mainly in response to improvements in the reliability and efficiency of the observing systems. Observers at the 4.2-m William Her- schel Telescope (WHT) currently get first-night (afternoon + evening) support from staff support astronomers, and all-night support from telescope operators. As of 2010, the telescope operators also provide engineering sup- port at night. Observers at the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) get first-night support from student support astronomers, but no night-time operator/engineering support. Feedback from observers indicates a continuing high level of satisfaction with the support they receive.

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST, i. e. Guoshoujing Telescope) has started its pilot survey since October 2011. To support user activities and promote effective use of LAMOST data (network services), 'User Supporting' enables users to easily obtain current information, which will be integrated with as many information resources and communication media as possible. In detail we take care of the solution of users' problems related to LAMOST data, the consulting and administration of users in all questions related to LAMOST data, and users' immediate response. According to users' feedback, new requirement for LAMOST data reduction pipeline will be suggested. As the diversity and characteristic of LAMOST spectral data, our service tends to be special customized service.

The Virtual Observatory (VO) is realizing global electronic integration of astronomy data. One of the long-term goals of the U.S. VO project, the Virtual Astronomical Observatory (VAO), is development of services and protocols that respond to the growing size and complexity of astronomy data sets. This paper describes how VAO staff are active in such development efforts, especially in innovative strategies and techniques that recognize the limited operating budgets likely available to astronomers even as demand increases. The project has a program of professional outreach whereby new services and protocols are evaluated.

Operation of the US Virtual Astronomical Observatory shares some issues with modern physical observatories, e.g., intimidating data volumes and rapid technological change, and must also address unique concerns like the lack of direct control of the underlying and scattered data resources, and the distributed nature of the observatory itself. In this paper we discuss how the VAO has addressed these challenges to provide the astronomical community with a coherent set of science-enabling tools and services. The distributed nature of our virtual observatory-with data and personnel spanning geographic, institutional and regime boundaries-is simultaneously a major operational headache and the primary science motivation for the VAO. Most astronomy today uses data from many resources. Facilitation of matching heterogeneous datasets is a fundamental reason for the virtual observatory. Key aspects of our approach include continuous monitoring and validation of VAO and VO services and the datasets provided by the community, monitoring of user requests to optimize access, caching for large datasets, and providing distributed storage services that allow user to collect results near large data repositories. Some elements are now fully implemented, while others are planned for subsequent years. The distributed nature of the VAO requires careful attention to what can be a straightforward operation at a conventional observatory, e.g., the organization of the web site or the collection and combined analysis of logs. Many of these strategies use and extend protocols developed by the international virtual observatory community. Our long-term challenge is working with the underlying data providers to ensure high quality implementation of VO data access protocols (new and better 'telescopes'), assisting astronomical developers to build robust integrating tools (new 'instruments'), and coordinating with the research community to maximize the science enabled.

The Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) and Calar Alto archives are the result of the collaboration agreements between the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, INTA-CSIC)) and two entities: GRANTECAN S.A. and the Centro Astronómico Hispano Alemán (CAHA). The archives have been developed in the framework of the Spanish Virtual Observatory and are maintained by the Data Archive Unit at CAB. The archives contain both raw and science ready data and have been designed in compliance with the standards defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) which guarantees a high level of data accessibility and handling. In this paper we describe the main characteristics and functionalities of both archives.

We describe here a multiband all sky monitoring system under construction using amateur resources. The system consists of a data management center and a network of telescopes. The total number of telescopes in this network can be huge and all the telescopes are not affected by their local weather or their operability so this network is capable of monitoring the whole night sky simultaneously in many different bands. The telescopes in the network can be operated on an individual basis or on a coordinated mode. The data taken by the telescopes in the network are sent to the data management center via internet where calibration, data fusion, data analysis are performed.

The Engineering Data Processing (EDP) component of the James Webb Telescope (JWST) Data Management System (DMS) will collect calibrated engineering values for about 15,000 parameters, 300 million samples per day, with a potential daily database growth of 14 GB, 5 TB per year, 50 TB for a 10-year mission. While data will be mostly received in (time, parameter) order, fast access requires translation into (parameter, time) organization and sorting. Organization and indexing of the data will affect storage requirements as well as ingest and access efficiency. Fast access is critical to pipelines processing and calibrating science data.

Observatories have wrestled for decades with the questions how to measure their importance to the astronomical community, what their scientific impact is, and how their performance in that respect compares to that of other observatories. There is a general sense that the answer is to be found in the publication record - specifically, in the refereed journal articles. However, simple parameters (such as the number of papers) are not helpful, because in isolation (applied to a single observatory) they are meaningless, while in comparison between observatories they are subject to external influences that all but invalidate the comparisons. We were fortunate in having the Chandra X-ray Observatory's bibliographic database with its rich variety of metadata available as a resource for experimenting with more sophisticated metrics. Out of this project we propose a modest set that contains meaningful information when viewed in the isolation of a single observatory as well as in comparison with other observatories. Even so, we urge users not to draw conclusions on the basis of the face value of the comparisons, but only after a serious analysis of potential causes for any differences or similarities. We have designed our metrics to provide useful information in three main areas of interest: speed of publication; fraction of observing time published; and archival usage. The basic measured parameters are the percentage of available observing time published as a function of the data's age, at a few specific age values; the median time it takes to publish observations; and similar parameters for multiple publications of the same observations. Citation of results is a fourth category, but it does not lend itself well to comparisons and defies the search for definite statements.

Assessing the impact of astronomical facilities rests upon an evaluation of the scientic discoveries which their data have enabled. Telescope bibliographies, which link data products with the literature, provide a way to use bibliometrics as an impact measure for the underlying observations. In this paper we argue that the creation and maintenance of telescope bibliographies should be considered an integral part of an observatory's operations. We review the existing tools, services, and work ows which support these curation activities, giving an estimate of the eort and expertise required to maintain an archive-based telescope bibliography.

Thirteen VLT/I instruments plus some extra critical components like the block-scheduling of the Laser Guide Star Facility and VLTI baselines make for a rather complex machine that constantly challenges our operational efficiencies. DOME (Dashboard for Operational Metrics at ESO) is an ongoing project developed, implemented and maintained by the ESO User Support Department. It aims at providing an ESO-internal dashboard where key operational metrics are published and updated at regular intervals. Here, we will present the project and report on the indicators that have been looked at until now.ty and VLTI baselines make for a rather complex machine that constantly challenges our operational efficiencies. DOME (Dashboard for Operational Metrics at ESO) is an ongoing project developed, implemented and maintained by the ESO User Support Department. It aims at providing an ESO-internal dashboard where key operational metrics are published and updated at regular intervals. Here, we will present the project and report on the indicators that have been looked at until now.

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS) is a high impact scientific program which will see its final official release open to the world in 2012. That release will seal the legacy aspect of the survey which has already produced a large collection of scientific articles with topics ranging from cosmology to the Solar system. The survey core science was focused on dark energy and dark matter: the full realization of the scientific potential of the data set gathered between 2003 and 2009 with the MegaCam wide-field imager mounted at the CFHT prime focus is almost complete with the Supernovae Legacy Survey (SNLS) team preparing its third and last release (SNLS5), and the CFHTLenS team planning the release based around the cosmic shear survey later this year. While the data processing center TERAPIX offered to the CFHTLS scientific community regular releases over the course of the survey in its data acquisition phase (T0001-T0006), the final release took three years to refine in order to produce a pristine data collection photometrically calibrated at better than the percent both internally and externally over the total survey surface of 155 square degrees in all five photometric bands (u*, g’, r’, i’, z’). This final release, called T0007, benefits from the various advances in photometric calibration MegaCam has benefited through the joint effort between SNLS and CFHT to calibrate MegaCam at levels unexplored for an optical wide-field imager. T0007 stacks and catalogs produced by TERAPIX will be made available to the world at CADC while the CDS will offer a full integration of the release in its VO tools from VizieR to Aladin. The photometric redshifts have been produced to be released in phase with the survey. This proceeding is a general introduction to the survey and aims at presenting its final release in broad terms.

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has been operating the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) since its launch in 1990. The valuable experience gained by running the HST data management system as well as providing data and science software to the community proved extremely valuable in designing the James Webb Space Telescope science data processing (SDP) architecture. The HST experience has been distilled in two main "products": on one hand a rich set of requirements for the full JWST SDP system, on the other a large dataset (using both current and historical instruments) that is of vital importance in exercising and validating the architecture for the new mission. During the past years the JWST project has made significant progress in areas of architecture design, selection of relevant technologies and development of a functional prototype pipeline orchestration and workflow management system (the Condor-based OWL). Recently, the HST mission office has started a three-year project to replace the aging HST SDP system (OPUS) with the one being developed for JWST (OWL). This is proving to be a tremendous opportunity to not only give HST operations a technology refresh; but also validate the architecture being developed for JWST. The present paper describes the lessons learned from HST operations, how we are applying them to JWST design and development as well as our ongoing progress on the joint HST-JWST development and operations.

The time domain has been identied as one of the most important areas of astronomical research for the next decade. The Virtual Observatory is in the vanguard with dedicated tools and services that enable and facilitate the discovery, dissemination and analysis of time domain data. These range in scope from rapid notications of time-critical astronomical transients to annotating long-term variables with the latest modelling results. In this paper, we will review the prior art in these areas and focus on the capabilities that the VAO is bringing to bear in support of time domain science. In particular, we will focus on the issues involved with the heterogeneous collections of (ancilllary) data associated with astronomical transients, and the time series characterization and classication tools required by the next generation of sky surveys, such as LSST and SKA.

Gravitational waves carry unique information about high-energy astrophysical events such as the inspiral and merger of neutron stars and black holes, core collapse in massive stars, and other sources. Large gravitational wave (GW) detectors utilizing exquisitely sensitive laser interferometry - namely, LIGO in the United States and GEO 600 and Virgo in Europe - have been successfully operated in recent years and are currently being upgraded to greatly improve their sensitivities. Many signals are expected to be detected in the coming decade. Simultaneous observing with the network of GW detectors enables us to identify and localize event candidates on the sky with modest precision, opening up the possibility of capturing optical transients or other electromagnetic counterparts to confirm an event and obtain complementary information about it. We developed and implemented the first complete low-latency GW data analysis and alert system in 2009-10 and used it to send alerts to several observing partners; the system design and some lessons learned are briefly described. We discuss several operational considerations and design choices for improving this scientific capability for future observations.

We present the VOEventNet infrastructure for large-scale rapid follow-up of astronomical events, including selection, annotation, machine intelligence, and coordination of observations. The VOEvent standard is central to this vision, with distributed and replicated services rather than centralized facilities. We also describe some of the event brokers, services, and software that are connected to the network. These technologies will become more important in the coming years, with new event streams from Gaia, LOFAR, LIGO, LSST, and many others.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has an event-driven architecture: an onboard Observation Plan Executive (OPE) executes an Observation Plan (OP) consisting of a sequence of observing units (visits). During normal operations, ground action to update the OP is only expected to be necessary about once a week. This architecture is designed to tolerate uncertainty in visit duration, and occasional visit failures due to inability to acquire guide stars, without creating gaps in the observing timeline. The operations concept is complicated by the need for occasional scheduling of timecritical science and engineering visits that cannot tolerate much slippage without inducing gaps, and also by onboard momentum management. A prototype Python tool called the JWST Observation Plan Execution Simulator (JOPES) has recently been developed to simulate OP execution at a high level and analyze the response of the Observatory and OPE to both nominal and contingency scenarios. Incorporating both deterministic and stochastic behavior, JOPES has potential to be a powerful tool for several purposes: requirements analysis, system verification, systems engineering studies, and test data generation. It has already been successfully applied to a study of overhead estimation bias: whether to use conservative or average-case estimates for timing components that are inherently uncertain, such as those involving guide-star acquisition. JOPES is being enhanced to support interfaces to the operational Proposal Planning Subsystem (PPS) now being developed, with the objective of "closing the loop" between testing and simulation by feeding simulated event logs back into the PPS.

The Deep Space Network (DSN) communicates with spacecraft as far away as the boundary between the Solar System and the interstellar medium. To make this possible, large sensitive antennas at Canberra, Australia, Goldstone, California, and Madrid, Spain, provide for constant communication with interplanetary missions. We describe the procedures for radioastronomical observations using this network. Remote access to science monitor and control computers by authorized observers is provided by two-factor authentication through a gateway at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. To make such observations practical, we have devised schemes based on SSH tunnels and distributed computing. At the very minimum, one can use SSH tunnels and VNC (Virtual Network Computing, a remote desktop software suite) to control the science hosts within the DSN Flight Operations network. In this way we have controlled up to three telescopes simultaneously. However, X-window updates can be slow and there are issues involving incompatible screen sizes and multi-screen displays. Consequently, we are now developing SSH tunnel-based schemes in which instrument control and monitoring, and intense data processing, are done on-site by the remote DSN hosts while data manipulation and graphical display are done at the observer's host. We describe our approaches to various challenges, our experience with what worked well and lessons learned, and directions for future development.

A prototype genetic algorithm (GA) is being developed to provide assisted and ultimately automated observation scheduling functionality. Harnessing the logic developed for manual queue preparation, the GA can build suitable sets of queues for the potential combinations of environmental and atmospheric conditions. Evolving one step further, the GA can select the most suitable observation for any moment in time, based on allocated priorities, agency balances, and realtime availability of the skies' condition.

This paper describes the design and implementation of a facility simulator for the 4 metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) project, a new survey instrument proposed for the ESO VISTA telescope. The 4MOST Facility Simulator (4FS) has several roles, firstly to optimise the design of the instrument, secondly to devise a survey strategy for the wide field design reference surveys that are proposed for 4MOST, and thirdly to verify that 4MOST, as designed, can indeed achieve its primary science goals. We describe the overall structure of the 4FS, together with details of some important 4FS subsystems. We present the initial results from the 4FS which illustrate clearly the value of having a functioning facility simulator very early in the conceptual design phase of this large project.

eROSITA is a German X-ray astronomical observatory on-board Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) with an expected launch in 2014 and operation at libration point L2. It consists of 7 identical mirror modules with 7 identical CCD cameras as focal plane instrumentation. It will observe the X-ray sky in the 0.25 − 10 keV range (4 yr all-sky survey, then pointed observations). Another instrument aboard SRG, ART-XC, will extend the spectral range to higher energies. We describe how the on-ground calibration is planned for the PANTER and PUMA X-ray test facilities, with respect to maximum scientific exploitation, in combination with an in-orbit calibration. This will be performed within one module and between the 7 eROSITA modules. If XMM-Newton will still be operational, a dedicated cross-calibration campaign is envisaged. The selection of the celestial targets and the procedure of the measurements with the internal Fe-55 calibration source are outlined.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be a large infrared space observatory orbiting the Sun-Earth second Lagrange Point. The Astronomer's Proposal Tool (APT), originally developed for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), has been extended to support JWST proposal development, using an Observation Template concept to provide Observers with a simple, focused interface to the primary observing capabilities of JWST, such as imaging, spectroscopy, or coronagraphy. APT will provide the Observer with the ability to specify more complex Observations by adding layers such as mosaics using a minimal set of inputs. APT will then expand each Observation to create one or more Visits where each Visit contains a set of exposures that can be performed using a single Guide Star. This paper will describe the capabilities required and the process used by APT to convert the high level Observation specification into lower level Visit structures, including the additional capabilities needed to support Multi-Object Spectroscopic Observations. We will also include a summary of the current state of APT implementation and remaining work.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will record approximately 2.5x10^6 images over a 10-year interval, using 6 optical filters, with a wide variety of cadences on time scales of seconds to years. The observing program will be of a complexity that it can only be realized with heavily automated scheduling. The LSST OpSim team has devised a schedule simulator to support development of that capability. This paper addresses the complex problem of how to measure the success of a schedule simulation for realization of science objectives. Tools called Merit Functions evaluate the patterns and other properties of scheduled image acquisitions.

RTS2, or Remote Telescope System 2nd Version, is an open-source, distributed and modular observatory control system. During the course of its development lasting over a decade, the original goal to develop software capable of searches for optical transients of γ-ray bursts changed to develop a system for full control of large observatories executing complex observing scenarios. In this presentation, we would like to share our experience with meta-queues scheduling, developed primarily for automation of the FLWO 1.2m telescope. Meta-queues scheduling allows observers to quickly build and com- bine dierent observational scenarios, while still retaining ToO and weather interruption capabilities. Thanks to the queues and scheduling graphical user interface, observers can use the system without the need to under- stand complex functions used in the traditional merit function scheduling. By combining meta-queues and merit function scheduling, observatories can oer dierent options to schedule their observations to their users, so the acquired data will match the observers' expectations.

Recent improvements to the planning and scheduling process of the Hubble Space Telescope will maximize scientific return over the telescope's remaining years. The return to 3-gyro operations increased the scheduling opportunities for science on HST. Improvements to the scheduling of programs through the South Atlantic Anomaly optimized efficiency. To address an RA-asymmetry in the HST target distribution, "exclusion zones" were implemented in the Cycle 20 Call for Proposals. These process improvements not only allow the continuation of groundbreaking science, but also serve as a bridge to the planning and scheduling systems of the James Webb Space Telescope.

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has the primary role for planning and executing the science program for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It also has a lead role, in support of the Prime Contractor, in planning and carrying out the science instrument commissioning program designed to enable, post-launch, the start of Observatory science. In this paper, we address planning principles and operational lessons stemming from our Hubble experience and show how those principles and lessons are being applied to the science commissioning plans for the JWST Observatory. In doing so, we contrast JWST's expected early-life operations with Hubble's post-servicing performance, and address any adjustments needed in our HST principles and lessons in order to effectively apply them to the specific challenges of JWST science commissioning.

As of July 2012, the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory is supporting scientific observing 60% of the time with binocular prime focus imaging, single-sided optical and near-IR imaging and spectroscopy, and adaptive optics imaging. Interspersed in the last year were installation and commissioning of the second adaptive optics system and recommissioning of the LUCI near-IR instrument with a replacement detector. Initial commissioning of mid-IR interferometry is underway as well. We examine the lost time statistics and distribution of issues that reduced on-sky access in the context of the limited technical support provided for observing. We discuss some of the root causes of and responses to a critical operational readiness review. The manner in which programs are selected and scheduled for the different partners is reviewed. The goal is to apply the lessons learned to the continuing period of observation plus commissioning anticipated as new spectroscopic, adaptive optics, and interferometric capabilities are added through 2015.

In this paper we review various organizational issues encountered when GRANTECAN, the Spanish organization responsible for the construction and operation of the GTC telescope, evolved from the construction phase of a large telescope facility into the phase of scientific operation. GRANTECAN now operates and further develops the 10.4m segmented telescope, GTC. The advent of operational pressures to scientifically exploit the telescope enforced a number of organizational changes as priorities shifted towards achieving the best possible level of operational effectiveness. In this paper we will treat the GRANTECAN experience as a case study of the limitations and problems that were encountered throughout this change. We will focus on the processes and strategies applied in order to achieve the necessary changes. We will place our experience in the framework of the McKinsey 7S model, highlight a number of key performance indicators, and will indicate the organizational changes that have taken place, that influenced the way the objectives are achieved. We will present a forward look based on our experience to date.

The ALMA Observatory is under construction at 5000 m above sea level on the Chajnantor plateau located in the Atacama Desert, Chile. When complete it will be comprised of 66 parabolic reflector antennas that can be configured in various arrays using a subset of 192 different stations with baselines from 15 to 16,000 m. The Antenna Group in the ALMA Department of Engineering is responsible for maintenance of the antenna mechanical, control and structural systems, antenna relocations and mechanical aspects of astronomical instrumentation exchanges. The large number of antennas, expanse, elevation, weather conditions of the Array Operation Site (AOS) and its distance from the Operations Support Facility (OSF) will make operations and maintenance for the Antenna Group a challenge. Currently, approximately half of the antennas are in place at the AOS and the first period of Early Science is underway. Operational strategies and specialized equipment developed for preventive and corrective maintenance, array reconfiguration and weather event response are being put to the test and revised based on real experience. This paper explains the operational environment, the constraints it imposes, some of the strategies and specialized equipment being developed to reduce reaction time and resources needed to maintain the array and maximize availability for science operations.

The Change from a reacting to a proactive maintenance concept represents for large Observatories at remote operational sites a new challenge, considering the increasing numbers of complex subsystems. Conventional operational maintenance models will not cover all the requirements, will lead to more down time and the operational cost cannot be reduced. For the successful astronomical observation with large telescope facilities new strategies have to be applied. In this contribution we will demonstrate on the example of the 78 Cryogenic Sub-systems of ALMA how a proactive maintenance strategy help to increase the efficiency, to reduce the operational cost and the required staff resources. With respect to the growing number of complex subsystems on future telescope facilities the operational staff needs proper diagnostic and monitoring tools to allow a precise prediction respectively synchronization of the service activities. This leads away from a pure scheduling of preventive maintenance and enables a longer availability of the subsystems as tendencies and performance are monitored and controlled. Having this strategy considered during the developing phase of future large astronomical facilities allows the optimization of the required Infrastructure, a proper definition of the LRU¹ strategy and to which level maintenance can be cost efficient on site.

The construction of the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope is nearly finished. LOFAR is currently being prepared to run a large variety of science projects for the years to come. LOFAR is a geographically widely distributed radio telescope consisting of, currently, 41 separate stations, or antenna fields. The majority of stations is situated in the northern part of the Netherlands. These Dutch stations are complemented by 8 stations in Germany, France, UK and Sweden. LOFAR uses a novel design with phased array technology for the antenna fields. It is built to receive sky signals with frequencies between 10 and 250 MHz, for which is uses two different types of antenna. LOFAR stations produce up to 4 Gb/s of digital data each, which are sent to a central processing facility hosted by the University of Groningen computing center, CIT. There the data streams are combined and processed to produce astronomically meaningful data. The processed data is archived in several large datacenters and made available to end-users. LOFAR produces science for radio pulsar studies, cosmic ray studies, sensitive wide-field imaging and many other applications. Much of the flexibility of LOFAR has been made possible by the abundant use of software and general purpose programmable hardware in its design. The versatility and geographical spread of the telescope stations and its resources leads to fascinating challenges in operations and maintenance. In this presentation I will present the operational concepts and challenges of the LOFAR telescope, and the solutions the LOFAR team has created for these.

The Observatorio Astrofsico de Javalambre in Spain is a new astronomical facility particularly conceived for carrying out large sky surveys with two unprecedented telescopes of unusually large elds of view: the JST/T250, a 2.55m telescope of 3deg eld of view, and the JAST/T80, an 83cm telescope of 2deg eld of view. The most immediate objective of the two telescopes for the next years is carrying out two unique photometric surveys of several thousands square degrees, J-PAS and J-PLUS, each of them with a wide range of scientic applications, like e.g. large structure cosmology and Dark Energy, galaxy evolution, supernovae, Milky Way structure, exoplanets, among many others. To do that, JST and JAST will be equipped with panoramic cameras under development within the J-PAS collaboration, JPCam and T80Cam respectively, which make use of large format (~10k×10k) CCDs covering the entire focal plane. This paper describes the current status and expected schedule of the overall project, the main characteristics of the telescopes, their cameras, the technical requirements of the two planned surveys, as well as the general operation strategy of the observatory.

There are many ways to solve the challenging problem of making a high performance robotic observatory from scratch. The Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (OAJ) is a new astronomical facility located in the Sierra de Javalambre (Teruel, Spain) whose primary role will be to conduct all-sky astronomical surveys. The OAJ control system has been designed from a global point of view including astronomical subsystems as well as infrastructures and other facilities. Three main factors have been considered in the design of a global control system for the robotic OAJ: quality, reliability and efficiency. We propose CIA (Control Integrated Architecture) design and OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) as a key performance indicator in order to improve operation processes, minimizing resources and obtaining high cost reduction whilst maintaining quality requirements. The OAJ subsystems considered for the control integrated architecture are the following: two wide-field telescopes and their instrumentation, active optics subsystems, facilities for sky quality monitoring (seeing, extinction, sky background, sky brightness, cloud distribution, meteorological station), domes and several infrastructure facilities such as water supply, glycol water, water treatment plant, air conditioning, compressed air, LN2 plant, illumination, surveillance, access control, fire suppression, electrical generators, electrical distribution, electrical consumption, communication network, Uninterruptible Power Supply and two main control rooms, one at the OAJ and the other remotely located in Teruel, 40km from the observatory, connected through a microwave radio-link. This paper presents the OAJ strategy in control design to achieve maximum quality efficiency for the observatory processes and operations, giving practical examples of our approach.

We will present the status of the scientific instruments and their associated systems at the Paranal observatory and the approach used to integrate, commission and to keep them at their maximum performances.

We describe the goals, guiding principles, and implementation of the Keck Observatory technical operations model and how scientific success is critically dependent on the symbiotic connection with the overall strategy of the observatory. We examine management approaches, organization and staffing that result from this approach. We discuss the choices made at the observatory in balancing regular operations and new scientific and technical capabilities, and the tradeoffs and consequences of these choices. We then elaborate on our plans to evolve operations in the areas of people and processes over the next several years. Finally, we address the applicability of the Keck model to the next generation of telescopes.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is executing the third observing cycle in the `warm' extended phase of the mission. For the warm mission, the observatory was effectively reinvented as a new, scientifically productive mission operating at a substantially lower cost. In this paper we describe the ongoing implementation of improvements in science capabilities during the extended mission phase even as the project budget continues to shrink. Improvements in pointing stability, data compression and data analysis techniques allow for new science opportunities more than 8 years after launch. Engineering analyses have shown that the mission can operate with high reliability and minimal technical risk through at least January 2017.

In late 2010, driven by funding pressure from its governing body, the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) underwent the most significant operational change in its history culminating in a new "minimalist mode" operation. Since 13th December 2010 this telescope, situated at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, has been operated remotely from the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hilo, with a priority on completing the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) but also continued support of other international programmes. In mid-2012, while remaining in minimalist mode, the observatory plans to start a new and ambitious near-infrared survey of the northern sky called the UKIRT Hemisphere Survey. The change to minimalist mode has resulted in the following: the cost of running the observatory has been reduced from $3.9M to $2.0M yet despite the changes, which included a reduction in staff and support, the UKIRT continues to operate at 90% efficiency, a level it has operated at for the last several years. The fault rate remains extremely low (approximately 3%) and has not been affected by remote operations and up until February 2012 no time-losing faults were attributed to operating remotely. This paper discusses the motivations behind the change to minimalist mode, the new mode of operation itself, the effect, if any, of the change on operational efficiency and the challenges facing a remotely operated telescope at a remote mountain site.

The All Sky Infrared Visible Analyzer (ASIVA) is an instrument principally designed to characterize sky con- ditions for purposes of improving ground-based astronomical observational performance. The ASIVA's primary functionality is to provide radiometrically calibrated imagery across the entire sky over the mid-infrared (IR) spectrum (8-13 μm). Calibration procedures have been developed for purposes of quantifying the photometric quality of the sky. These data products are used to provide the STELLA scheduler with real-time measured conditions of the sky/clouds, including thin cirrus to better optimize observing strategy. We describe how this can be used in the denition of the observing programs to make best use of the telescope time. Additional research is underway to correlate infrared spectral radiance with visible-spectrum extinction.

Spitzer observations of exoplanets routinely yield accuracies of better than one part in 10,000. However, there remain a number of issues that limit the attainable precision, particularly for long duration observations. These include initial pointing inaccuracies, pointing wobble, initial target drift, long-term pointing drifts, and low and high frequency jitter. Coupled with small scale, intrapixel sensitivity variations, all of these pointing issues have the potential to produce significant, correlated photometric noise. We examine each of these issues in turn, discussing their suspected causes and consequences, and describing possible and planned mitigation techniques.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was launched into orbit in June 2008, and is conducting a multi-year gammaray all-sky survey, using the main instrument on Fermi, the Large Area Telescope (LAT). Fermi began its science mission in August 2008, and has now been operating for almost 4 years. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory hosts the LAT Instrument Science Operations Center (ISOC), which supports the operation of the LAT in conjunction with the Mission Operations Center (MOC) and the Fermi Science Support Center (FSSC), both at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The LAT has a continuous output data rate of about 1.5 Mbits per second, and data from the LAT are stored on Fermi and transmitted to the ground through TDRS and the MOC to the ISOC about 10 times per day. Several hundred computers at SLAC are used to process LAT data to perform event reconstruction, and gamma-ray photon data are subsequently delivered to the FSSC for public release with a few hours of being detected by the LAT. We summarize the current status of the LAT, and the evolution of the data processing and monitoring performed by the ISOC during the first 4 years of the Fermi mission, together with future plans for further changes to detected event data processing and instrument operations and monitoring.

The main task of a scheduler applied to astronomical observatories is the time optimization and the maximization of the scientific return. Scheduling of observations is an example of the classical task allocation problem known as the job-shop problem (JSP) or the flexible-JSP (fJSP). In most cases various mathematical algorithms are usually considered to solve the planning system. We present an analysis of the task allocation problem and the solutions currently in use at different astronomical facilities. We also describe the schedulers for three different projects (TJO, CARMENES and CTA) where the conclusions of this analysis are applied in their development.

The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), located on the campus of the California Institute of Technology, is NASA's multi-mission data center for infrared astrophysics. Some of IPAC's services include administering data analysis funding awards to the astronomical community, organizing conferences and workshops, and soliciting and selecting fellowship and observing proposals. As most of these services are repeated annually or biannually, it becomes necessary to maintain multiple lists of email contacts associated with each service. MABEL is a PHP/MySQL web database application designed to facilitate this process. It serves as an address book containing up-to-date contact information for thousands of recipients. Recipients may be assigned to any number of email lists categorized by IPAC project and team. Lists may be public (viewable by all project members) or private (viewable only by team members). MABEL can also be used to send HTML or plain-text emails to multiple lists at once and prevents duplicate emails to a single recipient. This work was performed at the California Institute of Technology under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

ALMA is an interferometer composed of 66 independent systems, with specific maintenance requirements for each subsystem. To optimize the observation time and reduce downtime maintenance, requirements are very demanding. One subsystem with high maintenance efforts is cryogenics and vacuum. To organize the maintenance, the Cryogenic and Vacuum department is using and implementing different tools. These are monitoring and problem reporting systems and CMMS. This leads to different maintenance approaches: Preventive Maintenance, Corrective Maintenance and Condition Based Maintenance. In order to coordinate activities with other departments the preventive maintenance schedule is kept as flexible as systems allow. To cope with unavoidable failures, the team has to be prepared to work under any condition with the spares on time. Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) will help to manage inventory control for reliable spare part handling, the correct record of work orders and traceability of maintenance activities. For an optimized approach the department is currently evaluating where preventive or condition based maintenance applies to comply with the individual system demand. Considering the change from maintenance contracts to in-house maintenance will help to minimize costs and increase availability of parts. Due to increased number of system and tasks the cryo team needs to grow. Training of all staff members is mandatory, in depth knowledge must be built up by doing complex maintenance activities in the Cryo group, use of advanced computerized metrology systems.

Since the beginning of the ESPRESSO (Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations) project, it has been recognized that the expected challenging scientific results can be achieved only if an integrated view of the end-to-end operations is properly tackled. Hunting for rocky exoplanets and/or studying the possible variations of physical constants requires not only a dedicated, state-of-the-art spectrograph in terms of hardware and optics, but also a tailored observation strategy, data reduction pipeline and data analysis tools (ESPRESSO will be the first ESO instrument for which a customized Data Analysis Software will be provided to the community by the Consortium). In this paper we present the planned data flow system (DFS) for ESPRESSO as emerged after the Preliminary Design Review held in November 2011. Main requirements in terms of observation strategy/preparation and data reduction/analysis are analyzed and the corresponding foreseen (conceptual) design, able to fulfill them, discussed. Eventually, peculiarities and challenges needed to adapt ESPRESSO DFS in the pre-existing ESO/VLT DFS framework are outlined.

The ESO's VLT Spectrometer and Imager for the Mid-Infrared (VISIR) has been in operation at the Paranal Observatory since 2005. It is equipped with two DRS (formerly Boeing) 256 × 256 BIB arrays. The project to replace detectors into new Raytheon, 1k × 1k AQUARIUS devices as well as to modify observing modes, software, etc. is underway. The VISIR upgrade creates a well defined break point in the instruments' characteristics. For nearly 7 years of the VISIR operations we have been collecting and processing calibration data, in particular observations of the imaging and spectroscopic standard stars, within a regular data flow operation scheme. The derived quality control parameters have been systematically written into a database, which allows the analysis of their temporal behavior. We present an overview of the long term variations of the VISIR quality control parameters: sensitivity, conversion factor and mean background level estimations. The results will be later used to compare performance of VISIR before and after the upgrade.

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 Observatorio Astrof´ısico de Javalambre (OAJ), we have prepared a scheduler and a sequencer (SCH/SQ) which take 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 modify the schedule 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 paper describes the design of this software.

We present an overview of the conceptual design of the data handling unit of the ECS, the Control System for the European Solar Telescope (EST). We will focus on describing the critical requirements for this unit resulting from the overall design of the telescope, together with its architecture and the results of the feasibility analysis carried out to date.

One of the goals of the operations system being developed at the Space Telescope Science Institute for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to produce the most efficient use of the observatory that is scientifically justified. To first order, this means maximizing the amount of time spent collecting photons on science targets while ensuring the health and safety of the observatory and obtaining the necessary calibration data. We present recent efforts by the JWST EfficiencyWorking Group at STScI to quantify the expected observing efficiency based on current plans for the operations system. These include collecting the expected observatory and instrument overheads and updating a set of prototypical observing programs that will approximate over one full year of JWST observations. The combination of these two efforts is being used to investigate the expected observing efficiency and determine revised strategies to minimize overheads and maximize this efficiency.

J-PAS survey consists of an 8000 square degree photometric sky survey with a set of 54 narrow-band, 2 mediumband and 1 broad-band filters. The main goal is to produce a photo-redshift catalog of 15 millions red, earlytype galaxies with a precision (z) 0:003(1 + z) to measure the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation (BAO). Such precision requires specific care in the photometric calibration survey. This contribution presents the calibration protocol developed at CEFCA for the J-PAS data and to be applied from its first day. An auxiliary telescope JAST/T80 will perform an initial survey, J-PLUS, available before J-PAS, to create a set of flux calibrated stars in all J-PAS fields. Seven reference stars were already chosen to calibrate in flux the J-PLUS survey. J-PLUS 12-filter system was also specifically optimized to retrieve stellar parameters, T, log(g), [Fe/H], through the fitting of flux calibrated models. J-PLUS will be used as the standard network of flux calibrated stars to create synthetic spectro-photometry for J-PAS 56-filter system and to achieve the 1% photometric precision required for BAO measurements.

Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic sky surveys are now booming, such as LAMOST already built by China, BIGBOSS project put forward by the U.S. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and GTC (Gran Telescopio Canarias) telescope developed by the United States, Mexico and Spain. They all use or will use this approach and each fiber can be moved within a certain area for one astrology target, so observation planning is particularly important for this Sky Surveys. One observation planning algorithm used in multi-objective astronomical observations is developed. It can avoid the collision and interference between the fiber positioning units in the focal plane during the observation in one field of view, and the interested objects can be ovserved in a limited round with the maximize efficiency. Also, the observation simulation can be made for wide field of view through multi-FOV observation. After the observation planning is built ,the simulation is made in COSMOS field using GTC telescope. Interested galaxies, stars and high-redshift LBG galaxies are selected after the removal of the mask area, which may be bright stars. Then 9 FOV simulation is completed and observation efficiency and fiber utilization ratio for every round are given. Otherwise,allocating a certain number of fibers for background sky, giving different weights for different objects and how to move the FOV to improve the overall observation efficiency are discussed.

Astronomical facilities, both large and small, space- and ground-based, independently create and maintain publication databases that can be used to characterize the scientific productivity and impact of these facilities. This paper will present the results of a new survey that reveals how individual observatories manage bibliographies as well as their motivations behind them. We will examine such factors as: criteria for paper inclusion, metadata collected, staff involved, inter-operability, and other aspects particular to bibliographies. Finally, we learn how these data are analyzed by these facilities. In sum, the survey results characterize methods and motivations currently at work in astronomical facilities.

Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope (CFHT) Corporation operates and maintains under automation an all-sky mid-infrared (IR) camera providing the Mauna Kea community with real-time cloud detection and sky monitoring solutions. From the cloud's mid-IR black body emission detected in a medium bandwidth filter (10-12μm), time-based differentials are obtained permitting clouds to be detected for global and specific sky regions above Mauna Kea. The instrument interfaces with CFHT environmental monitors for autonomous operations and weather-induced shutdowns. Development efforts are continuing to eventually provide the following new data products: cloud cover determination, photometric quality assessment, sky and cloud brightness and color-based temperatures. The initial dataset provided by the instrument has shown to be invaluable for all modes of ground-based astronomical observing.

Spitzer Warm Mission operations have remained robust and exceptionally efficient since the cryogenic mission ended in mid-2009. The distance to the onow exceeds 1 AU, making telecommunications increasingly difficult; however, analysis has shown that two-way communication could be maintained through at least 2017 with minimal loss in observing efficiency. The science program continues to emphasize the characterization of exoplanets, time domain studies, and deep surveys, all of which can impose interesting scheduling constraints. Recent changes have significantly improved on-board data compression, which both enables certain high volume observations and reduces Spitzer's demand for competitive Deep Space Network resources.

The ESO Portal for Reporting of Operational Problematics, aka PROP, allows members of the astronomical community to use a single access point to contact various operational groups at ESO. From the inside, operations staff can use the tool to communicate with their colleagues within the frame of problem resolution while keeping all the information in one place. It also opens the possibility to compile a knowledge base and to easily derive statistics on problem resolution, e.g. to monitor better the quality of service.

Bibliometric studies have become increasingly important in evaluating individual scientists, specific facilities, and entire observatories. The ESO Library has developed and maintains the Telescope Bibliography (telbib), a database of refereed papers that use observational data generated by ESO's facilities. Recently, a new public interface has been released. In addition to classical queries for bibliographic and facility-related information, it provides advanced features like faceted searches and filtering, autosuggest support for author, bibcode and program ID searches, hit highlighting as well as recommendations for other papers of possible interest. An additional tool offers the possibility to create graphical statistics on the fly based on user-defined criteria. The ESO Telescope Bibliography is available at http://telbib.eso.org/.

In the last times the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), a 3.5m Italian telescope located in Canary Islands, is equipped with a metering software complex which enables the management to keep track of both observing program completion and observatory efficiency. The former is based on the images database, the latter on a web based user interface to keep the log of the night. The role of the telescope operator in keeping the database in order is essential, and also its limitation. Using the automatic output from this software the Technology and Astronomy divisions can keep track of the behavior of the observatory and take corrections if needed. Examples of the last year data are presented.

PACS is one of the three instruments of the ESA space mission Herschel. Its warm electronics consists of 4 computers connected through 1355 links. Each computer is equipped with a DSP-21020 microprocessor, each running its own software. In this poster we describe the main features of the dierent software with some emphasis on the FDIR (Failure Detection Isolation and Recovery) procedures implemented on-board: we describe the FDIR design and we show how the few anomalies that occurred since the Herschel launch three years ago, have been succesfully handled autonomously by the instrument.

An integrated scheduling and program management system is being developed for the MMT Observatory (MMTO), Arizona, USA. A systems engineering approach is used to combine existing and new relational databases, spreadsheets, file storage systems, and web-based user interfaces into a single unified system. An overview of software design, data management, user interfaces, and techniques for performance assessment is presented. Goals of this system include streamlined data management and an optimized user experience. The MMTO has over a dozen different telescope configurations, including three secondary mirrors and a wide range of observing instruments. Scheduling is complex for the varying telescope configurations, limited available observing time, and appropriate astronomic conditions (e.g., lunar phase) for each science project. Scheduled telescope configurations can be used to perform safety checks of actual configuration during telescope operations. Programmatic information is automatically input into nightly telescope operator (TO) logs by the system. The TO's provide additional information into the system on telescope usage, observing conditions (e.g., weather conditions), and observatory closure (e.g., from instrument malfunction or inclement weather). All of this information is synthesized to assess telescope and observatory performance. Web interfaces to the system can be used by observers to submit information, such as travel plans, instrumentation requirements, and observing catalogs. A service request (SR) (i.e., trouble report) system has also been developed for tracking operational issues. The specific needs of the MMTO have been met through in-house software development of this integrated scheduling and program management system.

More than 11 years have passed, since the first of the four Unit Telescopes of the VLT on Cerro Paranal has entered into operations. To keep four such complex telecopes at a high level of availability with only around 3 percent of technical down time does not only depend on a good and robust design and manufacturing process, but long term also on a sound preventive maintenance plan and program. In this paper the Instrument Adapter-Rotators, twelve of which are installed at the observatory, have been chosen to show how a preventive maintenance plan has been developed, implemented and executed and what the results are. In the first part the most common problems are shown and some larger interventions are described and listed. It explains the tests that have been developed to follow the status of the systems by measuring key parameters such as position error, motor current, torque and encoders status in order to detect at an early stage any degradation in performance parameters. Depending on the test results preventive actions can be planned well ahead of serious failures, making optimum use of scheduled technical time periods and consequently reducing loss of observing time. Finally some statistic charts show how problems have been reduced as a result of the preventive maintenance plan

The first of the trio Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3) has been deployed to Dome A, Antarctica in January 2012. This largest optical survey telescope in Antarctica is equipped with a 10k × 10k CCD. The huge amount of data, limited satellite communication bandwidth, low temperature, low pressure and limited energy supply all place challenges to the control and operation of the telescope. We have developed both the hardware and software systems to operate the unattended telescope and carry out the survey automatically. Our systems include the main survey control, data storage, real-time pipeline, and database, for all of which we have dealt with various technical difficulties. These include developing customized computer systems and data storage arrays working at the harsh environment, temperature control for the disk arrays, automatic and fast data reduction in real-time, and building robust database system.

We are currently developing network based tools for the Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT), Tenerife which will allow to operate the telescope together with the newly developed 2D-spectrometer HELLRIDE under remote control conditions. The computational configuration can be viewed as a distributed system linking hardware components of various functionality from different locations. We have developed a communication protocol which is basically an extension of the HTTP standard. It will serve as a carrier for command- and data-transfers. The server-client software is based on Berkley-Unix sockets in a C++ programming environment. A customized CMS will allow to create browser accessible information on-the-fly. Java-based applet pages have been tested as optional user access GUI's. An access tool has been implemented to download near-realtime, web-based target information from NASA/SDO. Latency tests have been carried out at the VTT and the Swedish STT at La Palma for concept verification. Short response times indicate that under favorable network conditions remote interactive telescope handling may be possible. The scientific focus of possible future remote operations will be set on the helioseismology of the solar atmosphere, the monitoring of flares and the footpoint analysis of coronal loops and chromospheric events.

Creating and maintaining an observatory bibliography is labor intensive, but the results can be used for more than accounting purposes. The information gathered during the curating process can be used by data discovery and research tools as well; the key is to collect sufficient metadata during the publication classification phase. The Chandra X-ray Center has taken this approach from the inception of its bibliography and we now have an interconnected web of links which lead researchers to the Chandra Data Archive from many sources. We provide links between datasets and astronomical publications to the Astrophysics Data System (ADS) so users of the ADS can directly access Chandra data associated with a publication. Those same links are used by WebChaser, the Chandra data access tool, so users can directly access articles associated with the data they are reviewing. We are expanding our exchange with the ADS to include details about the observations, proposals and bibliographic classifications related to the data in publications. This information will be used by the ADS to provide new semantic literature search capabilities. These interactions with the ADS and WebChaser have improved scientists’ ability to discover Chandra data in meaningful ways. In this paper we will cover how the Chandra bibliography has grown over the years and the many ways we have used our bibliography metadata for statistics, user services, and data discovery aids.

A LAMOST survey observation plate should have a bright star in the center for Shack-Hartmann wave front estimation. Given the plate position, there should be at least one proper guide star on each guide CCD after a small angle focal plate rotation. The detailed requirements vary according to different observation condition. As a consequence, the plate center cannot be placed arbitrarily. Using the HIPMAIN star catalog as the initial candidates and the USNO-B1.0 catalog for neighbor star reference, several lists of acceptable survey plate centers are generated for different observation conditions. The sky area coverage is tested with each plate list. Tiling algorithms using these finite plate centers are optimized for the purpose of evenly sampling and catalog completeness. The tiling is much easier for dark nights than bright nights as there are more optional plate centers. The result is applied in the LAMOST pilot survey for verification and feedback is used to update the lists retentively.