The SOAR Observation Schedule manager: a highly automated observation software for the SOAR 4.1m telescope

The Astronomical Event Observatory Network is a collaboration between NSF’s National Optical/IR Astronomy Research Laboratory and Las Cumbres Observatory to develop an ecosystem of world-class telescope facilities that will enable fast and efficient follow up observations of transients and Time Domain astronomy targets in the era of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. The SOAR 4.1m telescope has been the pathfinder facility for incorporating larger telescopes into this system. Here we describe the concept and architecture of the SOAR Observation Schedule manager software, which handles communications between SOAR and the Las Cumbres Observatory network at one end, ingesting automatically-generated schedules and sending back telemetry on the status of the facility, status of the observing queue, and upload of resulting data files, and on the other end “talks” to telescope and instrument, sending commands and requests, receiving back telemetry and data files.