Last night, the 0.4m telescope in the back parking lot (BPL) produced the first fully 'sequenced' observation with the new control system. The sequencer is the layer of software which sits on top of all the low-level telescope, instrument, and enclosure control systems and figures out what all needs to be done to accomplish an observation. It then 'sequences' those operations to satisfy their dependencies (e.g. don't start exposing until the enclosure is open) and sees them through to completion.
The attached image is the product of a command to observe M101 being received by the system with the enclosure closed, the telescope parked, and the instrument in an unknown state. The sequencer automatically opened the enclosure, homed the telescope, slewed to the source, commenced the telescope tracking, configured the instrument, and commanded a 5 minute exposure with as much parallelism as possible.
There is still much work to be done, but serious congratulations go out to all the members of the software and engineering teams who made this possible. This is a great step forward for us in creating our robotically scheduled global telescope network.
Thanks to Eric Hawkins (Software lead) for the image and up-to-the-minute information.
