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Space Science

Robotic Telescopes, Linux, and RTML 13

Posted by timothy from the for-the-resident-telescope-geek dept.
skintigh2 writes "Robotic telescopes controlled by Remote Telescope Markup Language and Linux scripts, along with stationary telescopes, are searching the skies and have made many findings: comets, hundreds of asteroids, 60,000 potential variable stars, and more. Will Linux save the Earth from a planet killer, or will we get crushed while the collected data goes unanalyzed? Read more to find out how you can help."
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Robotic Telescopes, Linux, and RTML More

Robotic Telescopes, Linux, and RTML

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  • spinning mercury mirror (Score:3, Interesting)

    by justanyone ( 308934 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @01:50PM (#6117319) Homepage Journal
    There was a story a while back about amateurs in Canada building a telescope out of a circular spinning table with Mercury on it. The result was a not-very-pointable telescope with a way huge size for very little money. Of course, prolonged exposure to liquid mercury is dangerous to breathe near, but a simple facemask can help a bunch and this would potentially be outside or in an open-topped building anyway.

    It seems to me that if the goal is a bunch of all-night observations of whatever piece of sky happens to be overhead, this might be a good telescope to use for that purpose. Superb light-gathering power, relatively cheap to build and operate, transportable, but with limited pointing capability.

    I wonder who might be interested in setting up one and linking up the observations with these folks?

    -- Kevin
  • How do you use a markup language to control a telescope? Markup languages are used to add meta data to describe a document. If anything it should be used to describe the remote telescope. It doesn't control the telescope directly; that's the function of the backend, comparable to the CGI used with HTML to accept forms data to make the server do things like take credit card orders. Without that, the HTML controls squat about what it describes.

    Either it is a markup language or it controls the telescope.
    • Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not get the conventional useage being presented here?

      It is not at all unusual to use a markup language (e.g. dialect of XML) to describe many different things. In many cases, these things may be actions to be taken. Yes, it is true that some interpreter on the back end will take the actions.

      With HTML, the interpreter is your browser; it takes actions to display formatted text and graphics.

      With VoiceXML, the interpreter makes selections and follows d

      • If RTML is instructions fed to a remote telescope in the form of markup, then why wouldn't HTML be called Web Browser Markup Language (WBML)?

        It may be conventional usage of XML-derived markup languages, but it seems antithetical to the idea of a markup language. I'll explain why:

        Markup languages don't use action verbs for their tags; they use nouns. "This is a table containing these table rows containing this tabular data." A browser knows what a table is and renders it according to its own rules (even

        • IMO, either the report is incorrect, or RTML isn't really a markup language but instead an XML crutch upon which a programming language is built.

          I think I can understand what you're getting at, but I'm having trouble understanding why you're getting into such an uproar over it.

          Unless you have additional information, the only information in the article is coming through the eyes of a journalist who's a science reporter for a space website. The likelihood that he's deeply familar with the internal

        • What you're saying is correct as far as it goes, but seems to me overly restrictive about what XML derivitives and other markup languages are intended to be used for. The difference between "emphasis" and "emphasize this" is a difference in grammar. The result is still that a rendering device emphasizes something.

          Similarly, the difference between "location" and "locate this" is a difference in grammar, but the result would be that a rendering device could locate something.

          XML is supposed to create a doc

    • How do you use a markup language to control a telescope?

      The same way you use other types of XML to control, say, a Web browser.

      Documents have content, and content can include procedural instructions. Lots of telescopes have programmable interfaces, and RTML could be used to either:

      • Tell a program running on a computer hooked up to a telescope what the telescope should do; or
      • Tell the telescope what to do directly.

      There are lots of programs available that can interpret instructions and transmit


  • "Read The Manky Literature" ?
    "Read The Manual, Loser" ?

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