Skynet Robotic Telescope Network

Built in 2004, the Skynet robotic telescope network originally consisted of six 0.4-m telescopes located at the Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Chilean Andes. The network was designed to carry out simultaneous multi-wavelength observations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) when they are only tens of seconds old. To date, the network has been expanded to dozens of telescopes, including a 20-m radio telescope, that span four continents and multiple countries.

Skynet is a sophisticated telescope control and queue scheduling software that simultaneously controls a global network of telescopes, allowing them to function individually or as an integrated whole. Skynet can control most commercially available telescope hardware, and provides participating institutions with easy-to-use web and API interfaces.

I joined Skynet in 2016 as a sophomore undergraduate researcher. After graduating in 2018, I was hired as a software engineer before returning to grad school in 2019. I've been working as a graduate researcher for Skynet since then.

I've developed numerous tools for Skynet that are being used by thousands of college and high school level students nationwide. Most of my work for Skynet is in Python, but I've spent significant time working in C++ and JavaScript/TypeScript as well. I've worked in every aspect of the development phase from designing the relational database, to creating an API, to implementing algorithms, to pulling my hair out trying to figure out why JavaScript is telling me that 1 + 1 = 11, and much more.