KEYWORDS: Software development, Telescopes, Data modeling, Computer architecture, Control systems, Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, Data acquisition, Data archive systems, Design, Cameras
The Astrophysics with Italian Replicating Technology Mirrors (ASTRI) Mini-Array is an international collaboration led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and devoted to imaging atmospheric Cherenkov light for very-high γ-ray astrophysics, detection of cosmic-rays, and stellar Hambury-Brown intensity interferometry. The project is deploying an array of nine dual-mirror aplanatic imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes of 4-m class at the Teide Observatory on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Based on SiPM sensors, the focal plane camera covers an unprecedented field of view of 10.5 deg in diameter. The array is most sensitive to γ-ray radiation above 1 up to 200 TeV, with an angular resolution of 3 arcmin, better than the current particle arrays, such as LHAASO and HAWC. We describe the overall software architecture of the ASTRI Mini-Array and the software engineering approach for its development. The software covers the entire life cycle of the Mini-Array, from scheduling to remote operations, data acquisition, and processing until data dissemination. The on-site control software allows remote array operations from different locations, including automated reactions to critical conditions. All data are collected every night, and the array trigger is managed post facto. The high-speed networking connection between the observatory site and the Data Center in Rome allows for ready data availability for stereoscopic event reconstruction, data processing, and almost real-time science products generation.
The ASTRI ("Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana") program is a collaborative international effort led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) for developing and operating an array of nine 4-m class Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs), sensitive to gamma-ray radiation at energies above 1 TeV, under deployment at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. In order to support the development, installation and operations of the ASTRI Mini-Array an on-site Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Infrastructure has been designed. In this paper we describe the main objective of the ICT infrastructure project and its configuration in the initial phase. This ICT infrastructure, which we called mini-ICT (m-ICT), include all hardware and services needed to support the installation and testing of the first three Telescopes Mechanical Structures of the ASTRI Mini-Array that will be installed at the Teide site by 2022, before the definitive ICT infrastructure will be up and running. The m-ICT includes a virtualization system (ProxMox) and a container system to run the ASTRI Mini-Array on-site control and monitoring software. It also includes all interconnection functions of his Local Area Network (LAN) and the necessary network services: Network Time Protocol (NTP), Domain name Server (DNS), Network Address translator (NAT), Virtual Private Network (VPN), Routing. Internet connection will also be supported so that the connection with the ASTRI Data Centre in Italy (Rome) can be tested and all test results transferred to this persistent storage.
KEYWORDS: Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, Data acquisition, Cameras, Control systems, Telescopes, Interferometry, Data centers, Software development, Computer architecture, Quality systems
The ASTRI Mini-Array is an international collaboration led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. This project aims to construct and operate an array of nine Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes to study gamma-ray sources at very high energy (TeV) and perform stellar intensity interferometry observations. We describe the software architecture and the technologies used to implement the Online Observation Quality System (OOQS) for the ASTRI Mini-Array project. The OOQS aims to execute data quality checks on the data acquired in real-time by the Cherenkov cameras and intensity interferometry instruments, and provides feedback to both the Central Control System and the Operator about abnormal conditions detected. The OOQS can notify other sub-systems, triggering their reaction to promptly correct anomalies. The results from the data quality analyses (e.g. camera plots, histograms, tables, and more) are stored in the Quality Archive for further investigation and they are summarised in reports available to the Operator. Once the OOQS results are stored, the operator can visualize them using the Human Machine Interface. The OOQS is designed to manage the high data rate generated by the instruments (up to 4.5 GB/s) and received from the Array Data Acquisition System through the Kafka service. The data are serialized and deserialized during the transmission using the Avro framework. The Slurm workload scheduler executes the analyses exploiting key features such as parallel analyses and scalability.
Gamma-Flash is an Italian project funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and led by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), devoted to the observation and study of high-energy phenomena, such as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes and gamma-ray glows produced in Earth’s atmosphere during thunderstorms. The project represents the ground-based supplement to the work of the ASI AGILE satellite in this particular field. This contribution presents the architecture of the Gamma-Flash data pipeline placed at the Osservatorio Climatico “O. Vittori” on the top of Mt. Cimone (2165 m a.s.l., Northern-Central Italy). It consists of RedPitaya ARM-FPGA boards designed for acquiring events at different energies from scintillator crystals coupled to photomultiplier tubes, and a main computer that executes a real-time software pipeline. The software performs several data processing steps, data acquisition, data reduction level, algorithms for waveform selection, and finally it produces the cumulative energy spectrum of the gamma radiation collected by the photomultipliers. Data is stored in different layers, each with a different purpose, and it is available to the scientific community as HDF5 files. The pipeline has a modular architecture to provide good maintenance and flexibility, allowing for easy extensions in the future. A specific subset of data is stored in a database connected to a real-time graphical dashboard for quick-look analysis, showing the acquisition products and the environmental telemetry data.
The ASTRI Mini-Array is an international project led by INAF to construct and operate nine Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes with the scientific goals of studying several classes of objects possibly emitting at energies higher than some TeVs and of performing stellar intensity interferometry observations. The telescopes array will be installed at the Teide Observatory (Tenerife, Spain). A Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) software system will be developed to manage the ASTRI Mini-Array allowing its control remotely, from several locations. One of the most important components of the SCADA system is the Telescope Control System (TCS), i.e. the system responsible for the control and supervision of each telescope. The TCS includes several supervisor components, that interface with the telescope local control systems, the hardware and software that control the telescopes hardware devices such as the telescope mount drive systems and the Cherenkov camera, via the Open Platform Communications - Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) standard. These supervisors are then controlled by a telescope manager component responsible for the execution of the single telescope scientific and technical operations requested, orchestrated and synchronized centrally by the SCADA array central controller. This contribution describes the TCS architecture, design and development approach in the context of the general SCADA architecture and of the ALMA Common Software, the framework chosen for the development of all SCADA software of the ASTRI Mini-Array.
The ASTRI project was born as a collaborative international effort led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) to design and realise an end-to-end prototype of the Small-Sized Telescope (SST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) in a dual-mirror configuration (2M). The ASTRI Mini-Array is being installed at the Teide Observatory on the island of Tenerife (Canary Islands) and represents the first system of atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes completely dedicated to the study of very high energy gamma emission. The ASTRI software supports the operations of the ASTRI Mini-Array. The Array Data Acquisition System (ADAS) includes all hardware, software and communication infrastructure required to acquire, buffer and store the bulk data of the ASTRI Mini-Array instruments which will be installed to the ASTRI telescopes. The Cherenkov Camera Data Acquisition, one for each telescope, is a component of the ADAS. It connects with the Back End electronics (BEE) of the Cherenkov cameras to acquire and save the raw data. The Cherenkov Camera Dispatcher gets data from the Camera Data Acquisition and interfaces with the Online Observation Quality System (OOQS) to decode and send acquired data in near real-time. The OOQS aims to perform the data quality analysis during the observations. According to the requirement specifications, we are redesigning the software to decode and send the raw data to the OOQS at a rate of 1 kHz. This contribution presents the assessment of a solution based on Avro software for data serialisation and a Kafka server for the data transmission to the OOQS.
The ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) Project was born as a collaborative international effort led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) to design and realize an end-to-end prototype of the Small-Sized Telescope (SST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) in a dual-mirror configuration (2M). The prototype, named ASTRI-Horn, has been operational since 2014 at the INAF observing station located on Mt. Etna (Italy). The ASTRI Project is now building the ASTRI Mini-Array consisting of nine ASTRI-Horn-like telescopes to be installed and operated at the Teide Observatory (Spain). The ASTRI software is aimed at supporting the Assembly Integration and Verification (AIV), and the operations of the ASTRI Mini-Array. The Array Data Acquisition System (ADAS) includes all hardware, software and communication infrastructure required to gather the bulk data of the Cherenkov Cameras and the Intensity Interferometers installed on the telescopes, and make these data available to the Online Observation Quality System (OOQS) for the on-site quick look, and to the Data Processing System (DPS) for the off-site scientific pipeline. This contribution presents the ADAS software architecture according to the use cases and requirement specifications, with particular emphasis on the interfaces with the Back End Electronics (BEE) of the instruments, the array central control, the OOQS, and the DPS.
KEYWORDS: Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, Telescopes, Data archive systems, Calibration, Data centers, Data processing, Monte Carlo methods, Data storage, Device simulation, Data acquisition
The ASTRI Mini-Array is an international project led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) to build and operate an array of nine 4-m class Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) at the Observatorio del Teide (Tenerife, Spain). The system is designed to perform deep observations of the galactic and extragalactic gamma-ray sky in the TeV and multi-TeV energy band, with important synergies with other ground-based gamma-ray facilities in the Northern Hemisphere and space-borne telescopes. As part of the overall software system, the ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana) Team is developing dedicated systems for Data Processing, Simulation, and Archive to achieve effective handling, dissemination, and scientific exploitation of the ASTRI Mini-Array data. Thanks to the high-speed network connection available between Canary Islands and Italy, data acquired on-site will be delivered to the ASTRI Data Center in Rome immediately after acquisition. The raw data will be then reduced and analyzed by the Data Processing System up to the generation of the final scientific products. Detailed Monte Carlo simulated data will be produced by the Simulation System and exploited in several data processing steps in order to achieve precise reconstruction of the physical characteristics of the detected gamma rays and to reject the overwhelming background due to charged cosmic rays. The data access at different user levels and for different use cases, each one with a customized data organization, will be provided by the Archive System. In this contribution we present these three ASTRI Mini-Array software systems, focusing on their main functionalities, components, and interfaces.
The ASTRI Mini-Array is a project led by INAF to construct nine Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes in order to study gamma-ray sources emitting up to the multi-TeV energy band. These telescopes, which will be deployed at the Observatorio del Teide (Tenerife, Spain), will be based on the prototype ASTRI-Horn telescope, successfully tested since 2014 at the Serra La Nave Astronomical Station of the INAF Observatory of Catania. Each telescope will be equipped with the new version of the ASTRI Silicon Photo-Multiplier (SiPM) Cherenkov Camera. In order to monitor and control the different subsystems, a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system will be developed to manage a set of software components. Among them, the Cherenkov Camera Supervisor (CCS), a software subsystem of the Telescope Control System (TCS), is the software component to control each Cherenkov Camera. It realizes the interface between each Camera and the central SCADA software through the Alma Common Software (ACS). Furthermore, the CCS is based on the Open Platform Communications - Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) standard, in order to realize a client/server system. The server side is implemented in the software subsystem deployed on board the Camera, while the CCS contains the client side which uses the server services. This work presents the design and the technologies used to implement the CCS. It describes architecture and functionalities starting from the definition of the use cases and the system requirements. Moreover, the work reports the various phases of the CCS development.
KEYWORDS: Data modeling, Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, Control systems, Software development, Telescopes, Data processing, Data archive systems, Data acquisition, Calibration, Computer architecture
The ASTRI Mini-Array is an international collaboration led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and devoted to the imaging of atmospheric Cherenkov light for very-high gamma-ray astronomy. The project is deploying an array of 9 telescopes sensitive above 1 TeV. In this contribution, we present the architecture of the software that covers the entire life cycle of the observatory, from scheduling to remote operations and data dissemination. The high-speed networking connection available between the observatory site, at the Canary Islands, and the Data Center in Rome allows for ready data availability for stereo triggering and data processing.
The ASTRI Mini-Array is an International collaboration, led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, that is constructing and operating an array of nine Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes to study gamma-ray sources at very high energy and perform optical stellar intensity interferometry (SII) observations. Angular resolutions below 100 microarcsec are achievable with stellar intensity interferometry, using telescopes separated by hundreds to thousands of meters baselines. At this level of resolution it turns out to be possible to reveal details on the surface and of the environment surrounding bright stars on the sky. The ASTRI Mini-Array will provide a suitable infrastructure for performing these measurements thanks to the capabilities offered by its 9 telescopes, which provide 36 simultaneous baselines over distances between 100 m and 700 m. After providing an overview of the scientific context and motivations for performing SII science with the ASTRI Mini-Array telescopes, we present the baseline design for the ASTRI Stellar Intensity Interferometry Instrument, a fast single photon counting instrument that will be mounted on the ASTRI telescopes and dedicated to performing SII observations of bright stars.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.