Project Goal
An Andor iXon 888 will be installed at FTN and FTS and possibly on our One Meter Telescope.
An Andor Luca R 604 - at least one- will be installed at each 0.4 meter telescope site.
Each camera will be available for Lucky Imaging and High Speed photometry. Processing will largely take place on the site clusters.
Interfacing with the telescope
The cameras will generate Data Cubes: multi-fits extensions. Each camera will be povided with a 320Gb solid state hard drive to dump the data. Data will then be automatically be transferred onto the local cluster (via dedicated fiber) for processing.
Users need to be able to select: Cadence, Number of images in the cube, Gain, Binning. Later on, modes other then frame transfers might need to be enabled.
GPS time stamps have to be incorporated in each image's header.
WCS info needs to be incorporated in the global header.
Lucky Imaging Pipeline
Processing will largely take place on the site clusters, allowing observers access to the raw data only in exceptional cases. Lucky images will be processed and only the images that pass a selected percentile cut (chosen by the obnserver) will be transferred and made accessible to the user.
A specific pipeline optimized for planet imaging should be in place for the 0.4 meter telescopes for education purposes.
A specific pipeline will be implemented for microlensing events as part of the Robonet software.
High Speed Photometry Pipeline
Processing will largely take place on the site clusters. Real time images for 2 selected targets ( a target nd a comparison star) should be available in real time to the observer. Lightucrves for all targets in the field should be generate and made available to the observer on the day following the observation. Raw data will be transferred at increments such as to not to interfere with the site operations. The observer should make available an IP where to the data will be transferred and an agent will initiate transfers of aty least ?Mb/day at convenient times. ultimately all the raw data should be made available to the observer.
for information contact fbianco@lcogt.net
