Dynamic scheduling for SOXS instrument: environment, algorithms and development

• Main Authors: Asquini, Laura, Landoni, Marco, Young, Dave, Marty, Laurent, Smartt, Stephen, Campana, Sergio, Claudi, Riccardo, Schipani, Pietro, Aliverti, Matteo, Battaini, Federico, Baruffolo, Andrea, Ami, Sagi Ben, Bianco, Andrea, Biondi, Federico, Capasso, Giulio, Cosentino, Rosario, D'Alessio, Francesco, D'Avanzo, Paolo, Hershko, Ofir, Munari, Hanindyo Kuncarayaktim Matteo, Pignata, Giuliano, Rubin, Adam, Scuderi, Salvatore, Vitali, Fabrizio, Achren, Jani, Duran, Jose Antonio Araiza, Arcavi, Iair, Brucalassi, Anna, Bruch, Rachel, Cappellaro, Enrico, Colapietro, Mirko, Della Valle, Massimo, De Pascale, Marco, Di Benedetto, Rosario, D'Orsi, Sergio, Yam, Avishay Gal, Genoni, Matteo, Hernandez, Marcos, Kotilainen, Jari, Causi, Gianluca Li, Mattila, Seppo, Pariani, Giorgio, Rappaport, Michael, Radhakrishnan, Kalyan, Ricci, Davide, Riva, Marco, Salasnich, Bernardo, Sanchez, Ricardo Zanmar, Stritzinger, Maximilian, Ventura, Hector
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 15-09-2022
• Subjects: Physics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2209.07181

We present development progress of the scheduler for the Son Of X-Shooter
(SOXS) instrument at the ESO-NTT 3.58 meter telescope. SOXS will be a single
object spectroscopic facility, consisting of a two-arms high-efficiency
spectrograph covering the spectral range 350-2000 nanometer with a mean
resolving power R$\approx$4500. SOXS will be uniquely dedicated to the
UV-visible and near infrared follow up of astrophysical transients, with a very
wide pool of targets available from the streaming services of wide-field
telescopes, current and future. This instrument will serve a variety of
scientific scopes in the astrophysical community, with each scope eliciting its
specific requirements for observation planning, that the observing scheduler
has to meet. Due to directions from the European Southern Observatory (ESO),
the instrument will be operated only by La Silla staff, with no astronomer
present on the mountain. This implies a new challenge for the scheduling
process, requiring a fully automated algorithm that should be able to present
the operator not only with and ordered list of optimal targets, but also with
optimal back-ups, should anything in the observing conditions change. This
imposes a fast-response capability to the scheduler, without compromising the
optimization process, that ensures good quality of the observations. In this
paper we present the current state of the scheduler, that is now almost
complete, and of its web interface.