ATIS: User to PAC to AT
The Principal Astronomer's Computer to Automatic Telescope Link
In the link between a PAC and an AT, ATIS links one telescope (an AT)
to the individual responsible for the operation of that particular
telescope (the PA). In this link, ATIS does not carry information
about the scientific relevance of the requests. ATIS states how an
automated telescope reacts to a given instruction, but the details of
how the telescope executes the instruction are not defined. It is
assumed that the operation of the telescope will be totally
automated. The level of automation used in the generation of ATIS
input files and the reduction and storage of ATIS output files is
determined by the PA. ATIS allows the PA to design observing
programs with adjustable levels of control and priority and can leave
the telescope control system the freedom to adjust for variable
execution time or interruptions of the observations caused by clouds
or other conditions, or it can exercise complete and exact control.
An attempt has been made to keep the statements in a form not unlike
those which an astronomer might pass to a human telescope operator who
knows how to operate the telescope but who has no knowledge of the
scientific goals of the astronomer. This does not make compact files,
but simplifies the debugging of problems. Standard compression
programs can make ATIS files compact. It is not expected that humans
will directly generate ATIS files directly with an editor, although it
could be done.
ATIS is designed to grow to allow added capabilities desired by users.
If a capability is needed within ATIS which does not exist in the
standard, users are encouraged to add these capabilities to their
particular project. If these capabilities might be of use to others in
the astronomical community users are encouraged to submit these
modifications as proposed standards for future ATIS revisions. The
users of ATIS should remain in control of what is placed in the
standard. The ATIS standard should be revised no more frequently than
once per year and is suggested that ATIS revisions carry the year as a
reference to the revision. The original version of ATIS was published
in 1989 and will be referred to as ATIS89. This version will be
referred to as ATIS93.
Capabilities added in ATIS93 which were not in ATIS89 include improved
time scheduling, the provision for real time interaction between the
PAC and the AT, statements for communications between users and PAs,
and statements for operating instruments containing CCD detectors.
The User to Principal Astronomer's Computer Link
This portion of ATIS is completely new in ATIS93 and should be
considered experimental. It is referred to as the Goal Oriented Astronomical Language (GOALS). It is
designed to provide a means for users to express their requests for
scientific observations to a PA (or to the surrogate PAC). It also
provides a means to return the results of the observations in a
meaningful way to the users. At the time of this standard, there are
no users currently using this portion of the standard. The primary
reason for providing this section was to remove some of the burden of
detailed interaction between the PA and the users and to allow the
design of an effective scheduler by providing a language for stating
astronomical goals in a semi-formal manner.
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