Continued Development and Growth of the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network

在美国国家科学基金会之前的资助下，北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的天文学家已经在智利的塞罗托洛洛美洲天文台建造了PROMPT（全色机器人光学监测和偏振望远镜），它由6个16英寸直径的机器人光学望远镜组成。为了做到这一点，他们还开发了天网：基于网络的动态队列调度和望远镜控制软件，能够控制许多望远镜。塞罗·托洛洛的望远镜是更广泛的天网机器人望远镜网络的一部分，该网络现在覆盖三大洲，很快将覆盖四大洲。天网现在被用于研究各种各样的瞬态和时变现象，包括伽马射线爆发的光学余辉。该项目将支持一位高级软件工程师的工作，他将(1)继续开发天网的软件；(2)将其他望远镜整合到Skynet中，扩大其地理和用户社区足迹；(3)通过在Cerro Tololo增加PROMPT-7望远镜，领导将天网的波长覆盖范围扩大到近红外。这一努力有望显著提高研究伽马射线暴和其他现象的能力。它还将加强天网更广泛的用户社区正在进行的研究和研究培训，主要是关于瞬态和时变现象。在过去的三年里，大约有18000名北卡罗来纳州的高中生使用Skynet来满足该州地球和环境科学的毕业要求，另外还有12000名中学生和小学生以及普通公众使用了Skynet的入门版界面来请求使用PROMPT进行观测。在这个项目中，这些努力将扩大到包括本科生，并扩大莫尔黑德天文馆和科学中心的教育和推广工作。

Under previous funding from NSF, astronomers at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill have built PROMPT (Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes), which consists of six 16-inch diameter robotic optical telescopes at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. To operate this, they have also have developed Skynet: web-based, dynamic queue scheduling and telescope control software capable of controlling many telescopes. The telescopes at Cerro Tololo are part of a wider Skynet Robotic Telescope Network that now spans three, and soon four, continents. Skynet is now being used to study a wide variety of transient and time-variable phenomena, including optical afterglows from gamma-ray bursts. This project will support the efforts of a senior software engineer who will (1) continue to develop Skynet's software; (2) integrate other telescopes into Skynet, growing its geographic and user-community footprints; and (3) lead the effort to expand Skynet's wavelength coverage to the near infrared with the addition of the PROMPT-7 telescope at Cerro Tololo.This effort is expected significantly improve the ability to study gamma-ray bursts and other phenomena. It will also augment the research and research training that is being carried out by Skynet's broader user community, primarily on transient and time-variable phenomena. Over the past three years, approximately 18,000 North Carolina high school students have used Skynet to satisfy state Earth and environmental science graduation requirements and an additional 12,000 middle and elementary school students, as well as members of the general public, have used an introductory version of Skynet's interface to request observations with PROMPT. In this project, these efforts will be broadened to include undergraduate students and to extend the education and outreach efforts at the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center.