Skynet's New Observing Mode: The Campaign Manager

TL;DR

The paper introduces the Campaign Manager, a new semi-autonomous observing mode for the Skynet telescope network, enabling scalable, real-time scheduling of observations for transient astronomical phenomena.

Contribution

It presents the development and capabilities of the Campaign Manager, enhancing Skynet's ability to conduct autonomous, flexible follow-up observations of transient events.

Findings

Campaign Manager enables real-time, scalable observation scheduling.

It supports follow-up of gravitational waves, GRBs, and supernovae.

The system improves responsiveness and flexibility in transient astronomy observations.

Abstract

Built in 2004, the Skynet robotic telescope network originally consisted of six 0.4 m telescopes located at the Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Chilean Andes. The network was designed to carry out simultaneous multi-wavelength observations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) when they are only tens of seconds old. To date, the network has been expanded to ~20 telescopes, including a 20 m radio telescope, that span four continents and five countries. The Campaign Manager (CM) is a new observing mode that has been developed for Skynet. Available to all Skynet observers, the CM semi-autonomously and indefinitely scales and schedules exposures on the observer's behalf while allowing for modification to scaling parameters in real time. The CM is useful for follow up to various transient phenomena including gravitational-wave events, GRB localizations, young supernovae, and eventually, sufficiently bright Argus Optical Array and Large Synoptic Survey Telescope events.