Proceedings Article | 25 July 2024
Laura Asquini, Marco Landoni, Dave Young, Laurent Marty, Stephen Smartt, Sergio Campana, Riccardo Claudi, Pietro Schipani, Jani Achrén, Matteo Aliverti, José A. Araiza-Durán, Iair Arcavi, Federico Battaini, Andrea Baruffolo, Sagi Ben-Ami, Andrea Bianco, Alex Bichkovsky, Anna Brucalassi, Rachel Bruch, Giulio Capasso, Enrico Cappellaro, Mirko Colapietro, Rosario Cosentino, Francesco D'Alessio, Paolo D'Avanzo, Massimo Della Valle, Sergio D'Orsi, Rosario Di Benedetto, Simone Di Filippo, Avishay Gal-Yam, Matteo Genoni, Marcos Hernandez, Ofir Hershko, Jari Kotilainen, Hanindyo Kuncarayakti, Gianluca Li Causi, Seppo Mattila, Matteo Munari, Giorgio Pariani, Hector Pérez Ventura, Giuliano Pignata, Kalyan Radhakrishnan, Michael Rappaport, Davide Ricci, Marco Riva, Adam Rubin, Bernardo Salasnich, Salvatore Savarese, Maximilian Stritzinger, Salvatore Scuderi, Fabrizio Vitali, Ricardo Zanmar Sanchez
KEYWORDS: Equipment, Telescopes, Astronomy, Databases, Lanthanum, Detection and tracking algorithms, Design, Tunable filters, Observatories, Adverse weather
We present the advancements in the development of the scheduler for the Son Of X-shooter (SOXS, 1,2) instrument at the ESO-NTT 3.58-m telescope in La Silla, Chile. SOXS is designed as a single-object spectroscopic facility and features a high-efficiency spectrograph with two arms covering the spectral range of 350-2000 nm and a mean resolving power of approximately R=4500. Its primary purpose is to conduct UV-visible and near-infrared follow-up observations of astrophysical transients, drawing from a broad pool of targets accessible through the streaming services of wide-field telescopes, both current and future, as well as high-energy satellites. The instrument is set to cater to various scientific objectives within the astrophysical community, each entailing specific requirements for observation planning, a challenge that the observing scheduler must address. A notable feature of SOXS is that it will operate at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in La Silla, without the presence of astronomers on the mountain. This poses a unique challenge for the scheduling process, demanding a fully automated algorithm that is autonomously interacting with the appropriate databases and the La Silla Weather API, and is capable of presenting the operator not only with an ordered list of optimal targets (in terms of observing constraints) but also with optimal backups in the event of changing weather conditions. This requirement imposes the necessity for a scheduler with rapid-response capabilities without compromising the optimization process, ensuring the high quality of observations and best use of the time at the telescope. We thus developed a new highly available and scalable architecture, implementing API Restful applications like Docker Containers, API Gateway, and Python-based Flask frameworks. We provide an overview of the current state of the scheduler, which is now ready for the approaching on-site testing during Commissioning phase, along with insights into its web interface and preliminary performance tests.
