An Automated Pipeline for the VST Data Log Analysis

TL;DR

This paper presents an automated pipeline for analyzing five years of VST telescope log data, enabling efficient extraction, processing, and visualization of information to reveal operational trends and issues.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel automated tool that processes large-scale telescope logs, improving upon manual analysis for long-term trend detection.

Findings

Automated pipeline successfully processed 5 years of log data.

Revealed useful operational trends and anomalies.

Enhanced data accessibility for observatory personnel.

Abstract

The VST Telescope Control Software logs continuously detailed information about the telescope and instrument operations. Commands, telemetries, errors, weather conditions and anything may be relevant for the instrument maintenance and the identification of problem sources is regularly saved. All information are recorded in textual form. These log files are often examined individually by the observatory personnel for specific issues and for tackling problems raised during the night. Thus, only a minimal part of the information is normally used for daily maintenance. Nevertheless, the analysis of the archived information collected over a long time span can be exploited to reveal useful trends and statistics about the telescope, which would otherwise be overlooked. Given the large size of the archive, a manual inspection and handling of the logs is cumbersome. An automated tool with an adequate user interface has been developed to scrape specific entries within the log files, process the data and display it in a comprehensible way. This pipeline has been used to scan the information collected over 5 years of telescope activity.