A Robotic “Social Media” Controlled Observatory for Education and Research

Abstract

I describe the world’s first robotic observatory to interact with its observers entirely using the social media platforms Facebook or Twitter. The telescope “tweets” what it’s doing, posts live images, and responds to observer commands through a comprehensive command set. Observation requests are queued and observed by a responsive queue engine. Its architecture, social media based image processing capability, and several usage examples are also described.