For all these reasons, and with the approach
of Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
operations (and the likely sea of change in
time-domain and transient astronomy that
it will bring), the time has come to step back
and rethink/redesign the OCS, and we’ve
started a project to do that.
As the Observing Database (ODB) lies at the
heart of it all, we made it an early candidate
for replacement; we are now progressing on
a modern Postgres SQL database design to
replace the current bespoke database, and a
new web-based Sequence Executor (seqex-
ec) to go with it. Along with these changes,
we’re developing a new “sequence model”
(which represents the detailed observing se-
quence within the OT), as the current model
is overcomplicated and the source of many
maintenance headaches.
We plan to deploy the new database with
the new seqexec in early 2018; this will be
usable with FLAMINGOS-2 and the Gemini
Multi-Object Spectrograph, and may also
enable some tests of on-the-fly scheduling
typical of what the LSST will need once it be-
comes operational.
For proposal submission, observation prep-
aration, and program monitoring, we an-
ticipate a set of interconnected web-based
tools to replace the current large download-
able packages. We will absolutely not simply
Figure 7.
The new seqexec,
currently under
development, running in
a web browser.
21
GeminiFocus
October 2017