The night of observation
The list of observations (observing schedule) that a robotic telescope must carry out during the night is passed to the telescope each day from it's control centre using the Internet.
This information is held in the computers at the observing site until it is needed for the night's observing.
Some key factors are:
- Weather conditions are continually monitored throughout the night by the observatory's weather station. Any changes in the weather are immediately acted upon and, if need be, the observatory is automatically closed until conditions improve.
- If observing conditions are poor some observations will be automatically taken off the schedule and carried out on another night.
- All schools' observational data are returned to the control centre (Liverpool John Moores University for the Liverpool Telescope) at the end of each night's observing run.
- Status reports are in the My Observations section of the Observing Menu for schools to monitor their observing requests.
