Workshop on Robotic Autonomous Observatories

The number of automatic astronomical facilities worldwide continues to grow, and the level of robotisation, autonomy, and networking is increasing as well. This has a strong impact in many astrophysical fields, like the search for extra-solar planets, the monitoring of variable stars in our Galaxy, the study of active galactic nuclei, the detection and monitoring of supernovae, and the immediate follow-up of high-energy transients such as gamma-ray bursts.

The main focus of the workshop will be on the new and existing astronomical facilities whose goal is to observe a wide variety of astrophysical targets with no (or very little) human interaction. The workshop will become an international forum for researchers to summarise the most recent developments and ideas in the field, with a special emphasis given to the technical and observational results obtained within the last five years.

Topics

Robotic Astronomy: historical perspective	Existing robotic observatories worldwide
New hardware and software developments	Real-time analysis pipelines
Archiving the data	Telescope and observatory control systems
Transient detection and classification	Protocols for robotic telescope networks
Standards & protocols for transient reporting	Scientific results obtained by means of robotic observatories
Global networks	Educational applications
Future strategies

When

Monday 18th to Thursday 21st May 2009

Where

Hotel Pueblo Camino Real, Los Álamos, Torremolinos (Málaga)
Provincia de Málaga, Andalucía, Spain, Europe