Custom Integration

This section describes the integration between existing or custom implementations of observatory software components.

Telescope Control System (TCS)

A TCS provides the interface between the telescope subsystems and the Observation Portal. This document describes in detail the necessary interactions between the OCS Observation Portal and an observatory’s TCS software.

Most observatories will have existing TCS software, so this document is written in order to present the capabilities that will need to be integrated into existing software so that it can communicate with the OCS Observation Portal.

Custom Scheduler Interfaces

This document describes the telemetry/weather and seeing interfaces that are built into the OCS Adaptive Scheduler. It also describes how to override those interfaces with a custom implementation to connect to your observatory’s existing data sources for telemetry/weather and seeing data.

Fully Custom Scheduler

This document describes the role of the observatory scheduling software and presents a general overview of the role of a scheduler - to schedule observations on observatory resources based on existing requests from observatory users or staff.

The OCS offers an Adaptive Scheduler which is designed to work directly with other components of the OCS, so this article is aimed at providing users who wish to implement their own scheduler the resources and information to do so.

Observatory Data Flow

This document describes the components necessary for an observatory to adopt the OCS Science Archive for data archival and retrieval. It covers configuration, data product ingestion after an observation, and contains some advanced topics with helpful information to help observatories construct a robust data transfer and archival system.