With the field of astronomy undergoing a revolution in data volume and automation, many observatories around the world are beginning to update their systems to take advantage of modern web technologies. However, producing a fully-featured and maintainable Observatory Control System (OCS) is an expensive undertaking! Las Cumbres Observatory successfully operates a network of 20+ robotic telescopes around the world, driven entirely by APIs. The software that enables this has been bundled up and open-sourced, the goal of which is to increase the rate of adoption of APIs in astronomical observing and to share the knowledge gained in the process of building the software so that the entire community benefits.
What does an API-driven Observatory Control System accomplish?
Astronomers can:
- Submit requests to observe a target, track the states of those requests, and cancel requests if their needs have changed
- View information about their past and current requests, proposals, and data products
- Be notified once their observation is complete
- Download their science data
Observatories can:
- Automatically update the observing schedule for a telescope when a new request is submitted
- Upload science data
- Update the states of requests and observations to keep users in the loop and to keep track of what still needs to be done
- Manage users and proposals who are able to submit requests
Since these actions are all backed by APIs, they can be triggered programmatically and can easily be incorported into other web interfaces and software systems.
See the Components section for more information about the different components of the OCS, and the Getting Started guide for details on running an example OCS stack. When you are ready to setup your own observatory’s OCS, visit the Deployment section for detail on initial setup.
Questions?
Please use github issues for any question or issue about a specific OCS application or library.
You can also reach out to us at ocs@lco.global for general questions.
View the source code for all projects on 
GitHub.
The Open Source Observatory Control System Project is managed by Las Cumbres Observatory, with generous financial support from the Heising-Simons Foundation.
