A telescope control and scheduling system for the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO)

TL;DR

This paper presents G-TeCS, a Python-based robotic control system for GOTO, enabling autonomous telescope operations and real-time scheduling for detecting optical counterparts to gravitational waves.

Contribution

Introduction of G-TeCS, a novel autonomous control and scheduling system specifically designed for the GOTO telescope array.

Findings

Successful autonomous operation of GOTO prototype

Real-time scheduling enables quick follow-up of transient events

System manages multiple hardware components efficiently

Abstract

The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a wide-field telescope project aimed at detecting optical counterparts to gravitational wave sources. The prototype instrument was inaugurated in July 2017 on La Palma in the Canary Islands. We describe the GOTO Telescope Control System (G-TeCS), a custom robotic control system written in Python which autonomously manages the telescope hardware and nightly operations. The system comprises of multiple independent control daemons, which are supervised by a master control program known as the "pilot". Observations are decided by a "just-in-time" scheduler, which instructs the pilot what to observe in real time and provides quick follow-up of transient events.