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F.V. Hessman (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen), R. Gelderman (Western Kentucky University), T. Naylor (University of Exeter), C. Pennypacker (UC Berkeley / LBL), I. Steele (John Moores University)
With the increasing switch from classical observing campaigns to service observations, the decreasing pressure on a large number of 1 - 2m telescopes, and the rapid growth in the number of robotic, autonomous telescopes, it has become possible to create a truly global network of telescopes - what we call ``Grid-Observing." Such a network would permit a variety of photometric and spectroscopic monitoring and temporal survey projects which cannot be performed either with current or proposed larger telescopes (e.g. LSST) or with individual telescopes operated by a single institution. Participating observatories can be ``paid" for the services they provide to the network by being able to extract an equivalent amount of time on other telescopes, scaled by aperture, spectral resolution, atmospheric conditions, and the costs of operation or willingness to provide such a service. An XML interface - Remote Telescope Markup Language - insures that communications within the network are simple and relatively easily adapted to existent observatory software and procedures. An eBay-like mechanism for the automatic scheduling of telescopes can provide the necessary flexibility needed to perform time-critical projects as well as insure that the participating institutions retain full control over their telescopes. We are planning on networking several robotic telescope in the near future and expect that many other robotic and non-robotic telescopes will follow.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to www.Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.de/~hessman/Grid-Observing. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.