
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.