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Robotic Telescopes, Linux, and RTML

Posted by timothy on from the for-the-resident-telescope-geek dept.

skintigh2 writes "Robotic telescopes controlled by Remote Telescope Markup Language and Linux scripts, along with stationary telescopes, are searching the skies and have made many findings: comets, hundreds of asteroids, 60,000 potential variable stars, and more. Will Linux save the Earth from a planet killer, or will we get crushed while the collected data goes unanalyzed? Read more to find out how you can help."

13 comments

  1. spinning mercury mirror by justanyone · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There was a story a while back about amateurs in Canada building a telescope out of a circular spinning table with Mercury on it. The result was a not-very-pointable telescope with a way huge size for very little money. Of course, prolonged exposure to liquid mercury is dangerous to breathe near, but a simple facemask can help a bunch and this would potentially be outside or in an open-topped building anyway.

    It seems to me that if the goal is a bunch of all-night observations of whatever piece of sky happens to be overhead, this might be a good telescope to use for that purpose. Superb light-gathering power, relatively cheap to build and operate, transportable, but with limited pointing capability.

    I wonder who might be interested in setting up one and linking up the observations with these folks?

    -- Kevin

    --
    Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
    1. Re:spinning mercury mirror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      The people of which you speak are most decidely not amateurs. Check them out.

    2. Re:spinning mercury mirror by Trull · · Score: 0

      I really can't see how that would work in practise. I built my scope with a mirror that is accurate to 1/8th the wavelength of yellow light. If you look into a pool of Mercury its not a great mirror when its in a bowl - so why would it get better when its spun?
      Still if they can crack it then good luck to them - but plasma spraying of aluminium with a silicon layer on top is much safer and far more environmentally friendly IMHO.

      Clear Skies

      Torc

      --
      -- NSY - SY OOT - Doric signs on local shop doors.
  2. Remote Telescope MARKUP LANGUAGE? by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How do you use a markup language to control a telescope? Markup languages are used to add meta data to describe a document. If anything it should be used to describe the remote telescope. It doesn't control the telescope directly; that's the function of the backend, comparable to the CGI used with HTML to accept forms data to make the server do things like take credit card orders. Without that, the HTML controls squat about what it describes.

    Either it is a markup language or it controls the telescope. It cannot be both.

    And if it is a markup language, I should be able to have an RTML browser that renders the Hubble at the simplicity of a circa 1960 child's hobby telescope with a tripod and sliding eyepiece.

    --
    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
    1. Re:Remote Telescope MARKUP LANGUAGE? by hotair · · Score: 1
      Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not get the conventional useage being presented here?

      It is not at all unusual to use a markup language (e.g. dialect of XML) to describe many different things. In many cases, these things may be actions to be taken. Yes, it is true that some interpreter on the back end will take the actions.

      With HTML, the interpreter is your browser; it takes actions to display formatted text and graphics.

      With VoiceXML, the interpreter makes selections and follows decision paths based on the receieve mark up.

      I have a home built embedded system that takes a home built XML dialect renders the dialect into the state of appliances in my home e.g. turns them on or off.

      It follows that RTML can be a dialect that describes actions to be "rendered" by a telescope or its associated machinery. It might say - point this way -, or - film from this time to that time -, or - track this path -.

      Many companies even let markup text drive human actions. Ever buy something on line to see it delivered by an express carrier the next day?

    2. Re:Remote Telescope MARKUP LANGUAGE? by chrisleonard · · Score: 1
      How do you use a markup language to control a telescope?
      The same way you use other types of XML to control, say, a Web browser.

      Documents have content, and content can include procedural instructions. Lots of telescopes have programmable interfaces, and RTML could be used to either:
      • Tell a program running on a computer hooked up to a telescope what the telescope should do; or
      • Tell the telescope what to do directly.
      There are lots of programs available that can interpret instructions and transmit control commands to scopes (in the spirit of the first bullet point above). I don't know if there are (m)any telescopes available that accept RTML directly (in the spirit of the second bullet point), but there might be. My scopes are not computerized, so when I use telescope-control software, it is always on scopes that belong to somebody else ... so I never have to worry about implementation details like that very much.
    3. Re:Remote Telescope MARKUP LANGUAGE? by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 1

      If RTML is instructions fed to a remote telescope in the form of markup, then why wouldn't HTML be called Web Browser Markup Language (WBML)?

      It may be conventional usage of XML-derived markup languages, but it seems antithetical to the idea of a markup language. I'll explain why:

      Markup languages don't use action verbs for their tags; they use nouns. "This is a table containing these table rows containing this tabular data." A browser knows what a table is and renders it according to its own rules (even if that rendering is as text separated by tabs and newlines).

      A language that tells its renderer to "point this way", "film from this time to that time", and "track this path" is not marking up data, it is instructing a device to do things. (Even HTML's EM tag is saying "this word has emphasis", not "emphasize this word".) If this is what RTML is, it isn't a markup language.

      Otherwise it's like telling a computer, "The zone immediately below us, in a square of fifty surface spacials," and expecting it to know you want it destroyed completely. The sentence was not a command. The response, "Clarify your instructions," is practically equivalent to an annoyed, "Yeah, what about it?"

      When your tags become verbs, what you have ceases to be a markup language and becomes an instructional language. It may look like a markup language, borrowing from the syntax rules of a markup language, but it is an instructional language. IMO, it would be improper to call it a markup language.

      Unless what it is marking up is a programming or other instructional language, one so designed that it needs a markup language to be laid upon it to ease the task of interpretation. This would be like overlaying an XML schema on top of C to make blindingly obvious what is what in a C program (structures, functions, statements, parameters, etc.). But one would not call such a CML a programming language, and the CML would not be controlling anything, merely making it easier for the compiler (or interpreter).

      IMO, either the report is incorrect, or RTML isn't really a markup language but instead an XML crutch upon which a programming language is built.

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
    4. Re:Remote Telescope MARKUP LANGUAGE? by jesterzog · · Score: 1

      IMO, either the report is incorrect, or RTML isn't really a markup language but instead an XML crutch upon which a programming language is built.

      I think I can understand what you're getting at, but I'm having trouble understanding why you're getting into such an uproar over it.

      Unless you have additional information, the only information in the article is coming through the eyes of a journalist who's a science reporter for a space website. The likelihood that he's deeply familar with the internal semantics of computer science terminology isn't very high, and trying to judge the decisions of the RTML designers based on what's said in this article is very premature. We don't even know how the language works.

      In addition, it's completely feasible to write programs without imperative commands. That's essentially what pure functional and logic languages are. (ie. Describe what should be done and let the computer figure out how to do it.) SQL, for example, doesn't tell the computer how to do something -- it just tells it what's wanted for the end result.

      All that aside, who cares if they've built a programming language into an XML form, anyway? They've discovered a new use for something, and it works! If there was an officially accepted term by a standards body for using XML to describe imperative commands, would you have as much of a problem?

      Meanwhile if you want to be really pedantic, you could say that it describes specifications of the imperative commands that a telescope should execute. If your original complaint was that XML elements shouldn't be verbs, this makes them nouns that describe the command-set verbs. It's still silly to argue over it, though.

      That's my two cents, anyway. Perhaps I just disagree with you.

  3. RTML? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1


    "Read The Manky Literature" ?
    "Read The Manual, Loser" ?

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  4. Don't get hung up on semantics by chrisleonard · · Score: 1
    What you're saying is correct as far as it goes, but seems to me overly restrictive about what XML derivitives and other markup languages are intended to be used for. The difference between "emphasis" and "emphasize this" is a difference in grammar. The result is still that a rendering device emphasizes something.

    Similarly, the difference between "location" and "locate this" is a difference in grammar, but the result would be that a rendering device could locate something.

    XML is supposed to create a document. That's a pretty broad category of things, and (to the amazement of some /.ers) includes a lot of document types that would *not* be interpreted by a Web browser. So suppose there is an XML document someplace in the world that looks like this:
    <request id="cal1964">
    <event sequence="1" ccd="on" name="M13">
    <duration TZ="UT">
    <starttime>20:05:00</starttime> <endtime>20:05:30</endtime>
    </duration>
    <location coords="ra/dec">
    <ra>16:41.7</ra>
    <dec>36:28</dec>
    </location>
    </event>
    <event sequence="2" ccd="on" name="M92">
    <duration TZ="UT">
    <starttime>20:06:00</starttime> <endtime>20:06:30</endtime>
    </duration>
    <location coords="ra/dec">
    <ra>17:17.1</ra>
    <dec>43:08</dec>
    </location>
    </event>
    </request >
    How is this *not* a valid XML document (I don't mean the syntax, I mean the concept)? It is a perfectly good use of the XML concept, and it is perfectly useful for remotely controlling a telescope, whether the RTML interpreter is in the scope's hardware or in a piece of planetarium software. This is true even though the document contains "instructions" - i.e., it says that I want the scope to photograph M13 at 20:05 UT for 30 seconds and M92 at 20:06 for 30 seconds (and it also gives the location of M13 and M92, although the interpreter is likely to already know this).

    Please understand that I just made this format up, I haven't tried to look up the actual RTML format anyplace. But I just don't see why in the world anybody would object to somebody doing something like this with XML. It looks like it's a spot-on application of what XML is for.

    Note that my example is *not* a programming language, but (from the astronomer's point of view) a format for conveying instructional *data*.