AVSOMAT: Automated Variable Star Observing

AVSOMAT
Automated Variable Star Observing

AVSOMAT is designed to increase the productivity of obtaining, reducing and reporting large numbers of CCD images of variable stars. It consists of a binary tool for reducing images and a collection of CommonLisp functions for dealing with collections of images, information about stars, former observations, etc.

Avsomat is used for:

planning observation sessions and generating gcx scripts; these are fed into gcx during observing runs and drive the pointing of the telescope to stars of interest and the exposure and storage of CCD images;
reducing collections of images automatically, that is extracting the magnitude of stars in the image;
producing aavso observation reports;
maintaining a set of interlinked html pages with the observation results; these pages also contain links to aavso light curves for easy verification, and feedback forms;
producing electronic starfield charts for automatic reduction;
searching through collections of images by position.

Selected features of avsomat are sometimes migrated or reimplemented in gcx which also features an interactive gnome interface.