I was wondering if there is an up-to-date build specification for a fully robotic observatory and data processing pipeline sufficient to produce variable star observations of scientific quality. As turn key as possible. Minimal human intervention. I’m sure many interchangeable configurations are possible and there are many points of debate - and plenty of reasons to claim that there are simply too many tradeoffs to consider or too many dependencies. But it would be great if there was some limited consensus around a few standard configurations that define, say, three budget levels, and that provides a continuously updated and comprehensive parts list of currently available technologies, software requirements, set up, etc. Perhaps maintained in a Google Doc. Something that captures the expertise, best practices, and collective wisdom of the AAVSO membership. Let’s assume the observatory isn’t permanently mounted. Quick mobile set up with no construction overhead: feed it a target list, automatic image acquisition, data reduction, etc. I’m very curious : is this a total pipe dream? What’s possible in 2024? Let’s say I had hypothetically (VERY hypothetically) a 10k budget. What could I do? What about a 3K budget? Even possible? I’m imagining a scalable highly-distributed loosely-coupled network of budget astronomical observatories for amateur survey astronomy with each site capable of generating thousands (10s of thousands?) of observations per year. What’s possible? What’s the state of the art? Thoughts?
Sounds pretty cool - I’m on the same journey with a (right now) remotely operable micro-observatory that would definitely fall below the $10k (USD presumably) limit. Right now I’m working on the software to run the whole show using KStars/EKOS to do the legwork with a web based tool to allow me to specify what stars to observe, collect the results, and do some automated reduction and report the results. Certainly the fact there is ubiquitous, free software able to automate the process is a big help.
My project is located on Github if anyone is interested:
Very interesting question indeed. Since few years now, I am also working on a remote observatory management software suite for automated spectroscopic survey.
Unfortunately, it is still lacking a lot of field-testing. But there are plenty of nice references that could be of interest for you if you are willing to do some developments:
it also has a (pretty basic) web interface for monitoring: (I cannot put the link but you can search github panoptes PAWS)
I am also in contact with developers of a very nice spectroscopic software ecosystem / web platform, responsible for the development of this database/vizualisation tool: staros-projects (dot) org which I hope will be my goto solution for getting a scientific outcome out of the gathered data.
