THE BELISSIMA TEAM IN MALAGA

The group of five astronomers, participants of the BELISSIMA project, from the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade (Dr. Milan Bogosavljević, Dr. Oliver Vince and PhD students Ms. Monika Jurković, Mr. Milan Stojanović, and Mr. Nemanja Martinović) participated in the work of the Second Workshop on Robotic Autonomous Observatories in Malaga, Spain. The workshop was organized from 5th to 10th of June, 2011. It was divided into nine sessions:

I. New hardware and software development; various robotic observatories were introduced and
presented: Javalambre observatory (Spain), Baker observatory (USA), MITSUME telescope
(Japan), CHASE-500 telescope (Chile), STELLA telescope (Spain) etc.

II. Real-time analysis pipelines; several software packages were presented in this session which
enable faster observations and data reduction (automatization).

III. Archiving the data and quality control; the big problem in astronomy is the data storage of
huge amount of data collected during many years of observations and this issue was discussed in
this session. Virtual Observatories (VO) tools, which are extremely helpful were also discussed.


IV. Telescope and observatory control system; telescope control systems (TCS) were presented in
this session. Some of them are AUDELA, RTS2, STELLA control system and LAMOST control
system. As the only open-source code, the RTS2 is particularly interesting for the planned
"Milanković"" telescope. It was developed by Petr Kubanek (who came to the executive meeting
in Prokuplje in September 2010, see his presentation is available here) and his collaborators from the Czech
Republic.

V. Scientific results obtained by means of robotic observatories; some recent scientific results
obtained by robotic telescopes were presented in this session. Main scientific topics carried out
using this kind of telescopes are Gamma Ray Burst follow-ups, exoplanets, variable stars etc.


VI. Global networks and protocols; there are several major projects connecting dozens of tele-
scopes into network (BOOTES, MASTER etc.). There are plenty of astronomical phenomena
which require simultaneous observation and/or long-term monitoring, thus the network of tele-
scopes is needed.


VII. Public outreach and citizen science; the role of robotic telescopes in educating students of
various ages was discussed in this session.

VIII. Educational application; benefits of using robotic telescope in education was discussed in
this section.

IX. Future strategies; projects of new planned robotic telescopes were presented in this session.

Dr. Milan Bogosavljević gave a talk in this session of the conference. He presented the
BELISSIMA project as well as many details regarding the future 1.5-class telescope.

 

 

 

At the Workshop the BELISSIMA group had two presentations in which they presented work of the BELISSIMA project:

 

1) Dr. Milan Bogosavljević in his talk presented the future robotic telescope "Milanković" to be
mounted at the Astronomical Station Vidojevica (ASV).


2) Other participants from the team presented a poster with the details on the 60cm telescope
and other instruments which have been recently installed on the ASV. Nemanja Martinović briefly
presented the poster in a 2 minute talk.

 

 

From left to right: Monika Jurković, Nemanja Martinović, Milan Stojanović, Dr. Oliver Vince and Dr. Milan Bogosavljević.

 

Dr. Milan Bogosavljević is presenting the project of the "Milanković" telescope.

 

 

Last Updated on Monday, 20 June 2011 10:09