HET Observation Scheduler (HObS)

History of HObS development and current approach

Concept

• Dec 2020 HET Board meeting: Discussions with HETDEX team identified a need for a more sophisticated observation scheduling tool to fill in the "holes" in the HETDEX survey as it reaches completion
• committee formed, ​requirements document created

Phase 0: Initial development and testing

• ... (include more here) ..
• 15 Sep 2022: first night of HObS running on-sky, acquiring OCD-style HETDEX observations.
• Testing continues with SJ or SR running HObs during their night RA duty to test new features and identify bugs

Phase 1:

• Once we have reached the requirements set out for Phase~1, HObS will be released for general night operations.

Starting or closing the HObS software

• Start the HObS software running with:

[stevenj@janus ~]$ hobs

• That should launch a GUI that looks like this:

• To close the software, click the "X" at the top right-hand corner of the window.

Auto-Observing targets (OCD-mode)

• Start observing OCD-style using the "Auto-Observe" button:

• This will:
  • use the current metrology (or default values) to run autoschedule
  • immediately execute the first target in the schedule
  • upon completion of that target, run autoschedule again and execute it

Stopping and Aborting observations

• Stop (after the current observation finishes) using the "Stop" button

• Immediately abort everything using the "Abort" button

Adding targets manually to schedule

• Click "Add target" and you will get a pop-up interface box where you can enter a target index number and an azimuth (E/W), and add it to the displayed schedule.

Executing a schedule

• Click "Execute Schedule" to execute the currently displayed schedule

HObS GUI features

• The sections of the GUI are detachable and resizable, similar to the TCS GUI
• The "HOBS Status" box indicates what HObS is doing at all times; can be:
  • list all possibilities here
• Visual rendering of planned schedule:
  • targets shown in green
  • overhead shown in red
  • full tracks shown as outline boxes
  • more coming soon - constraints, auto-schedules, moonrise, etc, etc