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Time-dependent short-term observational scheduling method for Yunnan 40 m Radio Telescope using a genetic algorithm

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Abstract

Modern astrophysics research has heavily relied on data measured from telescopes. Reasonable observational scheduling brings into play action on the output of highly sensitive data and utilization of telescopes. However, most existing observational scheduling methods aim to solve medium- to long-term problems with proposals as scheduled objects. Nevertheless, the Yunnan 40 m Radio Telescope (YRT40) has the requirements of short-term scheduling within a few days. In this paper, we present a time-dependent short-term observational scheduling method based on a genetic algorithm to achieve automatic scheduling of observation targets. We established a mathematical model of a multi-objective optimization with time dependence and the constraints of telescope hardware conditions with the aim of minimizing the slew time of the telescope and maximizing the scientific values of the targets. In the experiments, we adopted the actual observational targets of YRT40. The results from tests on the runtime of the telescope demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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Notes

  1. https://github.com/kustcn/scheduling-ga.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020SKA0110300), Funds for International Cooperation and Exchange of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11961141001), and Joint Research Fund in Astronomy (U1831204, U1931141) under a cooperative agreement between the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11903009). The authors acknowledge financial support from the Yunnan Ten Thousand Talents Plan Young & Elite Talents Project. The authors also wish to thank the reviewers for their suggestions that improved the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Information Engineering and Automation, Computer Technology Application Key Lab of Yunnan Province, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650500, Yunnan, China

    Shoulin Wei, Bingtao Wei, Wei Dai & Bo Liang

  2. Yunnan Power Transmission and Transformation Engineering Co., Ltd., Kunming, 650000, Yunnan, China

    Yanjun Chen

  3. Yunnan Observatories, Chinese Academy of Science, Kunming, 650000, Yunnan, China

    Longfei Hao & Yuxiang Huang

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  1. Shoulin Wei
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  2. Bingtao Wei
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  4. Longfei Hao
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  6. Wei Dai
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  7. Bo Liang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Longfei Hao and Yuxiang Huang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Shoulin Wei and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wei Dai.

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Wei, S., Wei, B., Chen, Y. et al. Time-dependent short-term observational scheduling method for Yunnan 40 m Radio Telescope using a genetic algorithm. Astrophys Space Sci 367, 97 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-022-04136-4

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