I the Messenger I
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I THE MESSENGER I No. 69 - September 1992 NTT Remote Observing from ltaly A. BALESTRA, P. SA NTIN, G. SEDMAK, Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, ltaly M. COMIN, G. RAFFI, A. WALUNDER, ESO 1. Introduction The main goals of the collaboration chltectun for the RO computer net- Remote obsenring (RO) from ESO- were: wok and communication system. Garching is by now a well-establishd The study. design and irnplementa- me implementation of a "second" seaice provided far the user community tian of a portable kit, including fiard- generation of RO software, based on by Em. So far it has been concerned ware and sohare for mote obser- UnIx and workstations hardware. An with instrummb located either at the vations with the ESO NlT from a important part of thls was the exten- CAT or at the 2.2-m telescope at IA European astronomical institute. sion of the real-time database of the Silla, operated from Garching shce The definition of the hardware ar- to a geognphidly dlstritwtd 1987. The advantages of this obming mode include reduced travel times, the possibility to accommodate shorter and regular long-term monitoring observing programmes, the possibility for students to participate in the observation and the facilities (people, Ilbrary and computers) normafly available in a European as- tronomical institute 11 ]. In order to create a new remote ob- senring environment for the EMMl and SUSl instruments on the N7T telescope, a collaboratron with the Astronomical Obsewatory of TriHe, Italy, was started In 1989. The Tdeste Observatory has a kq experience In ha field of Unix- based workstations and on distributed mvironments. The project was based on the philosophy of a multi-telescope, multi- instrument system addressed by many usem in parallel in e ftexlbla scheduling environment compatible with the auto- mattc execution of complex observing Figure I ;ASWIMIWS and w'sitws in the Trleste remote obsmtngmm - dngduring s Iang pqrammes. NTT exppsum. La SIlIa Observatory ESO IIeadquartars Astmnodd Institutes image system is uslng only one fifth of Chile &mote Control Centw Ilmnote OklngSitos I..# the available bandwidth. Thirdly, a data Germany Eumpn channel connects the local amnet- works of ESO-Garching and La Silta via routers. A dedicated local area network (LAN) has been created at €SO-Gmh- Voice ing for remote ohwing. This network uses a =patate Interface on the rovter, while all other nodes connected to the general IAN use another interface. Any '\ disturbances on the general IAN are ?sf thereby isalated from the remote ob- serving nem. A dedicated room at €SO-Qmhing MTT local has been allocated as the NIT remote control control room. It houses the remote con- systom trol station and care has been taken to create an ergonomic kstallatian. The w mote controt computer is a Unix work- station supported by two additional X terminals. Normally one of these X sta- LEVEL 0 LEVEL 1 LEVEL 2 tions is allocabd to telescope control, one to instrument control and one to Flgum 2: Block &gram of communbtion system, quiok look adimage pmcedng using MIDAS. A large videa monitor displaying video images is installed above the 3( terminals. At both ends of the cantrol telescope/instrument pafameten' pilot project for the VLT. In particular station 1s a PC, which the user normally database @?oat). new computer technologies, maw does not interact wlth very often. One is I The availability of the same software (user interface, on-line databases) and for video control and the other for re- and features for remote obsenring operational procedures should be aeiving meteo data from the GOES both at the first level site (ESO- tested, which are of Impattame for the satellib. Lastly a movable voice unit Garching) and at a second level slte VLT oontml system In general and not cwrtainFng a microphone and a toud- (user's Institute). only for remote observations. speaker implements access to the voice While the compl&e development af ll is foreseen to repeat the second system. the project tok three years, the first level remota amwing run from other The Nlllocal controt system ts bawd milestcne was reached with tb de- institutes in Europe, poTtlng to them the on two main computers runnlng the vdopmmt and test of the remote ob- set-up, which has been produced as a RTE-A operating system. In addian a sewing system of first level in Garching result: of the ESO-AOT collaborafion and UnIx wwkstatIon Is used for scientific This sptern Is now in the final test leasing jointly a link to Garching. data acquisition. The main characteris- phase and tbe *ration team Is being tics of the software architeaurn are a Wnd. R is foreseen to offer routine decoupllng of the conk11tasks from the rerrrote observing from ESO-Garehlng 2. System Archibetwe user inkface by means of a database on the MT with EMMWSI Wing in a The 2.1 #at Level Remote Observing and command handler. database April 1993. and command handler, togather with Meanwhile, the retevant hardware had ESO-Garchlng Is permanently Ilnked the TCPAP protocol suit, provldes the ben procured and several tesis took to La Silla via a 64 kbps leased satelllre software bridge between the 1-1 and placa, whi b arrangements were made link 121. During remote observing #he remote sites. for the installation of the 64 kbps Pnk bandwidth is subdivided, using time dl- The remote control software architec- from Garching to TrlesW. vislon multiplexing, Into three parallel ture b discussed in ddlIn (31 and only The final mllestbne was reached when channels. A voice channel Implements a s brief overvW is given here. The dad- the second level remote obselvlng run point-to-point voice link between the buted database (Xpool), implemented took place, from the 9th to the 1lth of night assistant at the Mland the re- according b the dmsenrer model and June 1992, at the Astronomical Obaer- mote obsenrer at ESO-Gmhing. A vid- using TCP sockets, allows remote read vatory of Trieste, Italy, during three eo image channel atlows the remote ob- and wrlte access. R is responsible for nights dlocated for remote observatlm sewer to select one vldeo source (e.g. prwiding &us Information t~ the re- with the WIT telescope. The present field acqubition, dlt viewer) for transfer mote control computer mand to allow de- article repork on the resub of this run, in slow-scan-television made. Dm to finil5on of set-up parameters from the which proved Mat the chamn concept the fad that video Images obtalnd by remote control computer. The com- and implemmtatIon were not lust work- the acquWtion camwas are normally mand handler, Implemented In a slm tlar ing but already quite reliable at the pres- very slmple, conststing of only a few way, is ~ponslblefor routing com- ent stag& The systwn was in fact USA sou^ on a black background, the mands, repties and asynchronous for about 30 hours for d mronomical compression algorithm works very well. status and alm messages between obmatlons by a team of eight as- Using a bandwidth of 12 kbps the nor- processes residing on different hosts. tronomers. mal frame repetltlon rate Is one frame These two mechanisms allow a fully In- The aim of this project was not slmply every 3 seconds. This makes R pmlble teractive mote control, providing the to build a remote obmnring environment to use the video imwsystem as fed- remote user with the same functionality for the MT, but right from the beginning back for interactive control, 0.g. offset- available locally at La Silla. It was conceived by Em to serve as a ting the telescope, even when the video Scintlfic data handling makes use- of Teritative Timetabla of CouncB SeWans and &mmWe Mdngs wl2-19 WWtWb'F- hnndnws NoWWTI~-?~%r~#c4mn$lt& Mwnk-27 Qbswhh gmesm- -14 Cald AU~war*plBQeR&&ng. k implemented. In the perspective of mul- tiple second levels. a dlstribution board for serlal lines has to be for-n. The link connecting first and second levet sites should have a bandwidth of at least 84 bps in order to completely manage all three channels. In a multiple- site configuration, while the first to sec- ond level lines wilt maintain this band- width, the main link between the zero Figure 8: The €SO-Garching remofe mnfrdt m. level and the first one will obviously need a higher bandwidth, i.e. at least Nx64 kbps where N is the number of secondary sites observing at the same standard network facilities, remote shell, are fo-n in the overall configuration time. ftp and the X protocol to transfer andlor in order to allow flexible scheduling. The A 64 kbpa digital ground-based link display scientific data. It takes about possibility of managlng remote observa- was leased jointly by ESO and OAT for one rnlnute to display an image, fnde- Uons from mare secondary levels on this test for the duration of one month. pendent of detector slre, in a standard more telescopes is therefore a natural Such a connection pmwd to be a novel- MIDAS dlsplay window using the X pro- extension of the system. ty for the German and the Italian PTT tocol. Actual transfer of the raw data Sirroe the data channel connects companies. Soma days at the beginning takes between 3 and 7 minutes for a computers already operating, in most of the connection period were lost ow- lkxlk frame, depending on a user cases on networks, two bridges allow ing to tests on both sides. This kind of setectabb cornpmion algorithm. an easy way to connect the LAN of the problem will hopefully disappear with The User Intedace 161 based on the first level with the LAN of the second the inemlng integration of the Em- Pegasus package developed at CFHT, one.