USING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AND OPEN STANDARDS FOR OPERATING ROBOTIC TELESCOPES

The University of Gottingen, the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas at Austin, and the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) operate two robotic telescopes called MONET at McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas (MONET/North), and at the SAAO in Sutherland, South Africa (MONET/South). After problems with our original observation control system and some difficulties with another one, we decided to build our own system, initially providing only the minimally required functionality, but allowing for easy extensibility. A decision was made to build on open standards and open source software only, so that we can use existing and well-tested technologies. In this paper we will describe our efforts to implement such an open observation control system using HTTP and XMPP. Furthermore, we will discuss possibilities for connecting multiple telescopes via VOEvents and RTML.