# Presentation: 087311

## Sky Camera DB Inputs

- (FNAL)
- SISPI Meeting
- 22 February 2007

## Purpose

-    An All-Sky Camera is needed in order to:

- Provide real-time estimates of the sky conditions for survey strategy
- E.g.: “Should the next target be a photometric calibration field, a science target, or something else?”
- Provide a measure of the photometric quality of an image
- E.g.: “This image was obtained under such-and-such conditions; is it good enough to be used for photometric calibrations?”
- Detect even light cirrus for the above purposes under a full range of moon phases (no moon to full moon)

## Functional Overview

-    The Sky Camera system should*:

- Image the full sky at a wavelength of ~10 microns once every 30 seconds throughout the course of nightly operations of the  Blanco 4.0m telescope.
- Process the images in real-time.
- Output in real-time a GIF version of the processed image to a webpage.
- Output in real-time a quantitative diagnostic indicating the cloudiness of the sky (e.g., the rms of the pixel values from the most recent processed image) to a web-accessible graph and to an archival database.
- Create and animation based upon the processed images from the past hour to detect cloud movement, and output this animation to a webpage.
- Create an animation based upon the full night’s processed images at the end of each night.
- Archive the raw and processed FITS images, processed GIF files, and the full-night animation to a web-accessible directory.

- *Based upon the functionality of the APO IRSC, which, in its current incarnation has been operationg successfully since 2001.

## APO IRSC Output

- Clear

- Cloudy

## Proposed SkyCam DB Inputs

- SkyCam table in DB:
-  Date & Time Stamp (UT/TAI)
-  mean sky brightness
-  std dev of sky brightness
-  “photometricity” flag (0/1)
-    (or threshold value of the std dev
-    of sky brightness considered
-    photometric)
-  name of associated SkyCam FITS
-   images (raw and processed)

## Slides from 26 April 2006 talk

## Purpose

-    An All-Sky Camera is needed in order to:

- Provide real-time estimates of the sky conditions for survey strategy
- E.g.: “Should the next target be a photometric calibration field, a science target, or something else?”
- Provide a measure of the photometric quality of an image
- E.g.: “This image was obtained under such-and-such conditions; is it good enough to be used for photometric calibrations?”
- Detect even light cirrus for the above purposes under a full range of moon phases (no moon to full moon)

## Functional Overview

-    The Sky Camera system should*:

- Image the full sky at a wavelength of ~10 microns once every 30 seconds throughout the course of nightly operations of the  Blanco 4.0m telescope.
- Process the images in real-time.
- Output in real-time a GIF version of the processed image to a webpage.
- Output in real-time a quantitative diagnostic indicating the cloudiness of the sky (e.g., the rms of the pixel values from the most recent processed image) to a web-accessible graph and to an archival database.
- Create and animation based upon the processed images from the past hour to detect cloud movement, and output this animation to a webpage.
- Create an animation based upon the full night’s processed images at the end of each night.
- Archive the raw and processed FITS images, processed GIF files, and the full-night animation to a web-accessible directory.

- *Based upon the functionality of the APO IRSC, which, in its current incarnation has been operationg successfully since 2001.

## APO IRSC Output

- Clear

- Cloudy

## The APO IRSC Hardware

- Design of the current APO IRSC,
- commissioned in 2001

- A photograph of the APO IRSC

## Disk Space Needs

- Image size:  320 pixels x 240 pixels
- 16-bit FITS images
- 150KB per FITS image
- 1 FITS image every 30 seconds
- 12 hours per night operation
- 1440 FITS images per night
- 1440 FITS images/night x 150KB / FITS image = 211MB / night
- Saving all images in GIF and animated GIF format as well as FITS format could conceivably triple the diskspace requirements
- Ancillary files (like nightly QA plots and logs) may only add an additional 1 MB per night or so to the archive
- 3 x 211MB / night ~ 630 MB / night
- Annual storage requirements ~ 630 MB /night x 365 nights ~ 225 GB

## SkyCam Cost Estimate*

| Raytheon “Thermal Eye” 300D 10-micron camera | $8,000 |
| --- | --- |
| Video-to-optical fiber converters
(E.g., Opticomm MMV-110 Mini XMT, RCV pair) | 2x$275 |
| Frame grabber
(E.g., Hauppauge WinTV 191) | $100 |
| Pentium Desktop with 1-GB RAM and 250 GB HD | $3,000 |
| External 250 GB HD (backup) | $250 |
| 18-inch-diameter hyperbolic mirror 
(machined aluminum) | ??? |
| Camera support structure and enclosure | ??? |
| TOTAL | $11,900
+??? |

- *Based upon information from the APO IRSC documentation page,
- http://hoggpt.apo.nmsu.edu/irsc/irsc_doc/

## Timeline

| Finalize design and start obtaining quotes for materials | Mar 1, 2007 |
| --- | --- |
| Start constructing SkyCam and writing SkyCam software | Sep 1, 2007 |
| Start commissioning SkyCam and SkyCam software | Mar 1, 2008 |
| Complete commissioning SkyCam and SkyCam software | Sep 1, 2008 |
| Start DES | Sep 1, 2009 |