Last updated: 10 November 2022
REMOTE OBSERVING WITH THE KECK TELESCOPES FROM THE U.S. MAINLAND
This page describes the evolution of the capability to support remote observing with the Keck Telescopes from the U.S. mainland and covers the period from 1997 through 2008.
After several years of planning and advocacy, in 2000 we developed a prototype remote observing facility on the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) campus. This facility enabled us to remotely conduct, from Santa Cruz, observations with many of the scientific instruments of the Keck 10-meter Telescopes . The two Keck telescopes are located on the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii.
On many nights, both telescopes are remotely operated from the W. M. Keck Observatory Headquarters, which is located in Waimea, approximately 32 kilometers from the Mauna Kea summit. The facility in Waimea is linked to the telescopes via a 1 Gbit/sec undersea fiber optic cable, which connects the computer networks at the two sites. A videoconferencing system allows the astronomers in Waimea to maintain effective contact with the observing assistants on the summit, who are responsible for telescope control and safety.
The remote observing facility we set up at UCSC (and subsequently at a number of other sites in the U.S. and Australia) operates as an extension of the facility in Waimea. It is linked to the Keck Telescopes and the headquarters in Waimea via a 1 Gbit/sec undersea fiber optic network link that was established as part of the Internet2 effort. A multi-point videoconferencing system enables the astronomers on the mainland to collaborate both with Keck instrument scientists located at the Waimea headquarters and with the Keck observing assistants located at the Mauna Kea summit. Our goal is to provide nearly identical observing capabilities from UCSC as are currently available from Waimea.
During 2000 and 2001, the facility at UCSC was used extensively to conduct remote engineering tests of several Keck instruments, and to remotely commission new observing capabilities for two of these instruments: the High Resolution Spectrometer (HIRES) and the Echellette Spectrograph and Imager (ESI) . The facility at UCSC become operational for science observing in September 2001, and was first used to conduct remote observations with both the ESI instrument on Keck-2 and the LRIS instrument on Keck-1.
During the week of September 11, 2001, this facility enabled astronomers from California to conduct their observations remotely from UCSC at a time when it was impossible to get airline flights to Hawaii due to the temporary shutdown of all domestic traffic.
During 2002, this facility played a pivotal role in the commissioning of the DEIMOS instrument on the Keck-2 Telescope. The commissioning of the DEIMOS active flexure compensation system was carried out entirely from UCSC via this facility.
During 2002 and 2003, all of the Keck optical instruments have been operated remotely on multiple occasions using the remote observing facility at UCSC. In many cases, large observing teams now share operational responsibilities, with some members of the observing team working from the Keck Headquarters in Waimea, while other team members collaborate with them remotely and in real time from the remote observing facility at UCSC. As of 2007, all Keck instruments (except for the Keck Interferometer), can be operated remotely from California.
Similar remote observing facilities are now operational at ten sites in California: UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), UC Los Angeles, UC Santa Barbara, UC Riverside, UC Irvine and UC Davis, as well as at Yale University in Connecticut and Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia.
REMOTE OBSERVING WITH THE LICK TELESCOPES FROM UC CAMPUSES
Building on the experience developed with the Keck Observatory remote observing program, Lick Observatory began work in 2005 on a project to enable remote observing with the Nickel 1-meter Telescope at the Lick Observatory facility at Mount Hamilton. On nights when they are not otherwise being used to operate instruments on either of the two Keck Telescopes, the Keck remote observing rooms located at the various UC campuses can instead be used for remote observing with instruments on the Nickel 1-meter Telescope at Mount Hamilton.
Starting in August 2008, Lick Observatory's remote observing capability was extended to include two instruments on the Shane 3-meter Telescope: the Kast Spectrograph and the Prime Focus Camera (PFCAM). In 2009, this capability was extended to include the Hamilton Spectrograph.
Originally, a set of four leased T1 circuits provided the only network connection between the Mount Hamilton site and the UCO/Lick Observatory headquarters on the UC Santa Cruz campus. A portion of that bandwidth was used to operate the Mount Hamilton telephones, leaving only about 5.5 Mbits/sec for data communications. Starting in 2012, data communications were migrated to the high-speed microwave link described on my home page.
MY PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS ON REMOTE OBSERVING
My public presentations on remote observing include the following, in reverse chronological order:
At the CENIC 08 Lightpath to the Stars computer networking conference held in Oakland in March 2008, I gave a presentation on Remote Observing at UCO/Lick Observatory which described both remote observing at Keck and Lick Observatories.
I gave presentations on Keck remote observing at the Keck 2006 Science Meeting held at UC Irvine in September 2006 and at the SPIE Astronomy Symposium held at Orlando, Florida in May 2006.
I also made presentations on remote observing at the Keck 2005 Science Meeting held at Caltech in September 2005 and at the SPIE Astronomy Symposium held in Glasgow, Scotland in June 2004.
In August 2002, I chaired a conference on Advanced Global Communication Technologies for Astronomy as part of SPIE's symposium on Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation that was held in Waikoloa, Hawaii. Remote observing was one of the topics for that conference. I also presented at that conference a paper about Keck remote observing facilities.
On May 6, 2002, I made a brief presentation at the remote instrumentation discussion of the Internet-2 Spring 2002 member meeting. The slides for that presentation, in PowerPoint format, can be found here.
In October 2001, I presented a poster paper on Keck remote observing at the Keck 2001 Science Meeting at Caltech.
On April 4, 2001, at the Science, Culture, and Education over Internet2 Networks meeting held in Chile, I presented a virtual talk about our Keck Telescope remote observing initiatives. (The Power Point slides from this presentation are available as a Power Point file. However, I did not travel to Chile to attend this meeting in person. Rather, I gave my presentation from our Keck Telescope Remote Observing Facility located on the UC Santa Cruz campus. My interactive talk was presented live to the audiences in Chile via an H.323 multi-point videoconference carried over the Internet-2 networks in Chile and the United States. (The H.323 multi-point controller was located in Chile.) Simultaneous translation into Spanish was provided for the participants in Chile, which included audiences at several Chilean universities. The main audience was located at Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria in Valparaiso. The meeting was also broadcast simultaneously to the videoconference rooms of seven of the nine universities of the REUNA Consortium that are part of the Universidad Virtual (U. Austral de Chile, U. de Atacama, U. de Concepción, U. de La Serena, U. del Bío-Bío, U. Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación and U. Tecnológica Metropolitana). My presentation also included live participation from astronomers Steven Vogt, Geoff Marcy, and Paul Butler. These three astronomers were working from the Keck 1 remote observing room at the Keck Observatory Headquarters in Waimea, Hawaii, and were actively engaged in observations aimed at finding extra-solar planets and planetary systems.
At the end of January 2001, at the APAN/TransPAC/NLANR/Internet2 Techs Workshop held at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, I gave a presentation on our Keck remote observing facility. I also gave a similar presentation at the Campus Focused Workshop on Advanced Networks held at the University of California San Diego in December 2000.
Related to these remote observing activities, in March 2000 I co-chaired a conference on Advanced Global Communications Technologies for Astronomy at SPIE's Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Symposium in Munich. The proceeding from that conference are available from SPIE. I also presented a paper at that conference ("Remote observing with the Keck Telescopes from the U.S. mainland") which describes in detail our plans for the Keck remote observing facility at UCSC. This paper is available is either Adobe Acrobat PDF format or in PostScript format .
On March 23, 1998, I co-chaired (with Hilton Lewis of Keck Observatory ) a special "birds of a feather" (BOF) session on "Improving Internet Access to Mauna Kea Observatories". This session was held in conjunction with the SPIE conference on Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation in Kona, Hawaii from March 20-28. More information on this BOF session can be found on page 2 of the General Information for the conference. If you are interested the results of this session, please contact me via e-mail at kibrick@Ucolick.org or via telephone at (831)-459-2262. The minutes of this session are now on-line.
On March 31, 1998, David Lassner (Director of Information Technology for the University of Hawaii, e-mail david@hawaii.edu) and I made a brief presentation to the NASA IRTF/Keck Management Operations Working Group (MOWG) during its meeting at the Keck Headquarters in Waimea, Hawaii. This presentation described the need for improved Internet access between Hawaii and the mainland and encouraged NASA to support the collective efforts of Keck, Lick, Caltech, JPL, and UH to improve this link.
Remote Observing with the Keck Telescopes , presented at the SPIE Telescope Control II symposium at San Diego on July 27, 1997, describes progress on developing software to allow remote observing with the Keck Telescopes, both from the Keck Headquarters in Waimea, Hawaii, and from the mainland. At that San Diego conference, a successful live demonstration of Keck remote observing was conducted from the San Diego Convention Center during the early morning hours of July 28. Since this paper and demonstration were presented, further progress has been achieved. In October 1997, we successfully demonstrated software which supports simultaneous, coordinated remote observing from multiple sites. Additional description of our Keck remote observing work can be found in the Future Work section of the paper Remote observing with the Keck Telescope using the ACTS satellite (Final Report) .
A more general article on Keck remote observing ("Through the Far Looking Glass: Collaborative Remote Observing with the Keck Telescope") , appeared in the May/June '98 issue (Volume V.3, pgs. 32-39) of ACM Interactions magazine
With regard to remote observing at other observatories, I suggest you refer to "Remote Observing at the ESO NTT and CAT telescopes" by Ziljstra, Wallander, Kaper, and Rodriguez, which appeared in the November 1997 issue of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. That paper provides an excellent description of ESO's remote observing facility, which provides for remote operation of telescopes located in Chile from a control room in Germany.
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII High Performance Internet Connection Proposal to NSF
In July 1998, the University of Hawaii submitted to NSF a High Performance Internet Connection grant proposal that would provide DS3 (45 Mbps) connectivity from Oahu to the mainland Internet2 backbone via an existing DREN circuit. This proposal also included upgrades to the various Hawaiian networks operated by UH, and would increase bandwidth between Mauna Kea and Oahu from 1.5 Mbps to 6.0 Mbps. This proposal was approved by the NSF in late February 1999. The upgraded link between Oahu and the mainland became operational in early May 1999, and the upgraded circuits between Oahu and Mauna Kea became operational in May 2000. This improved connectivity was essential for our remote opeation of the Keck Telescopes from California.
In late-March 1999, the NSF also approved a proposal by the Gemini Telescope consortium to upgrade the Hawaii to Oahu link from the 6.0 Mbps (as proposed in the UH HPC proposal) to 45.0 Mbps. These two NSF proposals were in fact implemented in parallel, and as of May 2000 have provided a 45 Mbps pathway from the mainland to Mauna Kea. Peering between this path and the various mainland high-performance networks occurs at the Next Generation Internet Exchange point NGIX-West located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
Since then, the link from Oahu to the mainland was upgraded first to OC-3 (155.52 Mbits/sec), and then to even higher speeds. In late 2007 a 1 Gbit/sec link became operational from Mauna Kea all the way back to the U.S. mainland.