The computer that runs all of the scheduling, data retrieval, and webserver functions will be down tomorrow (Friday 6/23/2006) morning starting around 9:00 AM (Eastern time). They are doing work on the electrical systems in the room that it lives in so it needs to be shutdown while that is going on. As such, it will be completely unavailable for scheduling or data retrieval during most of the day tomorrow.
We hope that they will be able to complete the work tomorrow, but that may not be the case. We should be able to bring the system back up late in the afternoon/early evening tomorrow, but if they need to continue work, it will go down again Monday.
Sorry for the very short notice, but we were just informed of it ourselves.
–Aaron
How does the scheduling algorithm decide whether or not to close the telescopes? I gather there must be only rudimentary ability to discriminate based on partial cloud cover or haze since there seem to be a lot of images exposed when conditions are cloudy. What are the long term plans? Is it possible to tie the PROMPT telescopes to whether or not some CTIO telescope is in use?
On a (maybe) related issue — have you thought about mounting some kind of inexpensive nightsky domecam that would show the sky, perhaps even placing an occasional image on the web? (or maybe even replace the PROMPTcam with a PROMPT nightskycam now that construction is done)? I've found that the cheap sky camera that we have at TCO is so good that I rely on it more than I rely on my own eyes to pick up incoming clouds (only cost a couple hundred $$). Hey I'd even chip in for one……
