• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.211-220
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• 2000

Korea Astronomy Observatory(KAO) is working to retrofit its 1m robotic telescope in collaboration with a company (ACE, Astronomical Consultants & Equipment). The telescope system is being totally refurbished to make a fully automatic telescope which can operate in both interactive and fully autonomous robotic modes. Progress has been made in design and manufacturing of the telescope mount, mechanics, and optical performance system tests are being made for re-configured primary and secondary mirrors. The optical system is designed to collect 80% incident light within 0.5 arcsec with f/7.5 Ritchey-Chretien design. The telescope mount is an equatorial fork with a friction drive system. The design allows fully programmable tracking speeds with typical range of 15 arcsec/sec with accuracy of $\pm5$ arcsec/hour. The mount system has integral pointing model software to correct for refraction, and all mechanical errors and misalignments. The pointing model will permit positioning to better than 30 arcsec RMS within $75^{\circ}$ from zenith and 45 arcsec RMS elsewhere on the sky. The software is designed for interactive, remote and robotic modes of operation. In interactive and remote mode the user can manually enter coordinates or retrieve them from a computer file. In robotic mode the telescope controller downloads the coordinates in the order determined by the scheduler. The telescope will be equipped with a CCD camera and will be accessible via the internet.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.207-212
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• 2015

We introduce the Lee Sang Gak Telescope (LSGT), a remotely operated, robotic 0.43-meter telescope. The telescope was installed at the Siding Spring Observatory, Australia, in 2014 October, to secure regular and exclusive access to the dark sky and excellent atmospheric conditions in the southern hemisphere from the Seoul National University (SNU) campus. Here, we describe the LSGT system and its performance, present example images from early observations, and discuss a future plan to upgrade the system. The use of the telescope includes (i) long-term monitoring observations of nearby galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and supernovae; (ii) rapid follow-up observations of transients such as gamma-ray bursts and gravitational wave sources; and (iii) observations for educational activities at SNU. Based on observations performed so far, we find that the telescope is capable of providing images to a depth of R = 21:5 mag (point source detection) at 5-σ with 15 min total integration time under good observing conditions.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.52.1-52.1
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• 2016

We introduce the characteristics and performance of the 0.25m telescope at Mangpo high school Unmanned Robotic Observatory (MURO) which was established in Yangpyeong-gun, Gyeongi-do, KOREA in 2015 January. MURO system included Astrohaven 2.1m non-rotation fiberglass clamshell dome, Paramount MEII mount, Takahashi CCA 0.25m wide field telescope, FLI PL 16803 4K CCD with 7-positions filter wheel system, all sky camera and point grey wide field camera, IR 4 chanel heat sensor camera for security, DAVIS realtime weather cast, and power controled by ARS system. All control softwares are from off-the-shelf products based on Windows 7 OS to be easily operated and maintained. We expect to perform variety of science programs ranging from supernovae follow-up observation to narrow band imaging survey as well as science class activities at Mangpo high school.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.82.2-82.2
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• 2015

In this talk, we introduce the Lee Sang Gak Telescope (LSGT), a 0.43m telescope that can be operated remotely. This telescope was installed at the Siding Spring Observatory in 2015 October, and since then, it has been operated through a robotic reservation system, remotely from Korea. This telescope is now being used for educational and research activities of SNU Astronomy program. By placing the telescope at a place with an excellent astro-climate in Australia, the observation class activity can include objects in the southern hemisphere to the magnitude limit of V=20 mag at an exposure time of a few minutes. For example, Cepheid stars in Magellanic clouds can be observed during a class activity for constructing the classical Cepheid light curves that has been a key distance measure technique. Research activities such as transient observation and monitoring observation of AGN are possible, and we are currently running a high cadence supernovae search program by monitoring nearby galaxies intensively (see a presentation by C. Choi). The installation of the telescope was made possible from a support from the Seoul.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.683-685
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• 2015

A group of universities have come together with the aim of designing and developing Small Aperture Robotic Telescopes (SmART) for use by students to observe variable stars and transient follow-ups. The group is deliberating on the components of the robotic system; e.g. the telescope, the mount, the back-end camera, control software, and their integration keeping in mind the scientific objectives. The prototype might then be replicated by all the participating universities to provide round the clock observations from sites spread evenly in longitude across the globe. Progress made so far is reported in this paper.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.111-120
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• 2024

Cloud coverage is a key factor in determining whether to proceed with observations. In the past, human judgment played an important role in weather evaluation for observations. However, the development of remote and robotic observation has diminished the role of human judgment. Moreover, it is not easy to evaluate weather conditions automatically because of the diverse cloud shapes and their rapid movement. In this paper, we present the development of a cloud monitoring program by applying a machine learning-based Python module "cloudynight" on all-sky camera images obtained at Miryang Arirang Astronomical Observatory (MAAO). The machine learning model was built by training 39,996 subregions divided from 1,212 images with altitude/azimuth angles and extracting 16 feature spaces. For our training model, the F1-score from the validation samples was 0.97, indicating good performance in identifying clouds in the all-sky image. As a result, this program calculates "Cloudiness" as the ratio of the number of total subregions to the number of subregions predicted to be covered by clouds. In the robotic observation, we set a policy that allows the telescope system to halt the observation when the "Cloudiness" exceeds 0.6 during the last 30 minutes. Following this policy, we found that there were no improper halts in the telescope system due to incorrect program decisions. We expect that robotic observation with the 0.7 m telescope at MAAO can be successfully operated using the cloud monitoring program.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.57.2-57.2
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• 2017

Remote and robotic telescopes are the most effective instrument for astronomical survey projects. The system is based on the dynamic operation of all astronomical instruments such as dome and telescope control system (TCS), focuser, filter wheel and data taking camera. We adopt the ASCOM driver platform to control the instruments through the integrated software. It can convert different interface libraries from various manufacturers into a uniform standard library. This allows us to effectively control astronomical instruments without modifying codes. We suggest a conceptual design of software for automation of a small telescope such as the new wide-field 0.25m telescope at McDonald Observatory. It can also be applied to operation of multi-telescopes in future projects.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.311-318
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• 2006

High-precision photometric observations were performed in BVI bandpasses using Am robotic telescope at Mt. Lemmon Observatory for two binary stars, which are reclassified as W UMa-type systems from ROTSE(Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment) follow-up observations and show peculiar light variations. In order to analyze W UMa-type eclipsing binaries systematically, the light curve analysis script using 2005 version of Wilson-Devinney binary code is constructed. The orbital inclinations of GSC2S84-1731 and GSC2576-0319 are $43.^{\circ}5\;and\;57.^{\circ}6$ from light-curve analysis, respectively. Spot model is applied to explain the asymmetric light curve for GSC2S84-1731 and the spot parameters are derived.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.111-121
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• 2022

Based on the light an exoplanet blocks from its host star as it passes in front of it during a transit, the mid-transit time can be determined. Periodic variations in mid-transit times can indicate another planet's gravitational influence. We investigate 83 transits of TrES-1 b as observed from 6-inch telescopes in the MicroObservatory robotic telescope network. The EXOTIC data reduction pipeline is used to process these transits, fit transit models to light curves, and calculate transit midpoints. This paper details the methodology for analyzing transit timing variations (TTVs) and using transit measurements to maintain ephemerides. The application of Lomb-Scargle period analysis for studying the plausibility of TTVs is explained. The analysis of the resultant TTVs from 46 transits from MicroObservatory and 47 transits from archival data in the Exoplanet Transit Database indicated the possible existence of other planets affecting the orbit of TrES-1 and improved the precision of the ephemeris by one order of magnitude. We now estimate the ephemeris to be (2 455 489.66026 BJD_TDB ± 0.00044 d) + (3.0300689 ± 0.0000007) d × epoch. This analysis also demonstrates the role of small telescopes in making precise midtransit time measurements, which can be used to help maintain ephemerides and perform TTV analysis. The maintenance of ephemerides allows for an increased ability to optimize telescope time on large ground-based telescopes and space telescope missions.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.61.2-61.2
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• 2021

SkyMapper is the largest-aperture optical wide-field telescope in Australia and can be used for transient detection in the Southern sky. Reference images from its Southern Survey cover the sky at δ <+10 deg to a depth of I ~ 20 mag. It has been used for surveys of extragalactic transients such as supernovae, optical counterparts to gravitational-wave (GW) and fast radio bursts. We adopt an ensemble-based machine learning technique and further filtering scheme that provides high completeness ~98% and purity ~91% across a wide magnitude range. Here we present an important use-case of our robotic transient search, which is the follow-up of GW event triggers from LIGO/Virgo. We discuss the facility's performance in the case of the second binary neutron star merger GW190425. In time for the LIGO/Virgo O4 run, we will have deeper reference images for galaxies within out to ~200 Mpc distance, allowing rapid transient detection to i ~ 21 mag.