2019-Jan: Zoom Transition

(excerpted from the Keck Observer Newsletter)

The slow drumbeat of changes to Remote Observing (formerly known as Mainland Observing) continues. We will soon be using Zoom for video conferencing during remote observing sessions. Remote sites will be able to connect with Keck night staff using either Polycom hardware or Zoom hardware, so depending on whether the remote site has opted to change their hardware, observers may not see an immediate difference other than the address their Polycom dials to connect to Keck will change. This transition should be fairly smooth because we can support connections from existing hardware (Polycom) and new hardware (Zoom). The exact date for this transition has not been set, but we are coordinating with remote sites on the plan.

Maintaining a high quality experience for our observers is of paramount importance during this transition. As a result, while it is possible to connect to a Zoom meeting from inexpensive hardware (e.g. a cheap webcam and a laptop), we are currently only supporting connections from approved remote stations using approved hardware (high quality cameras and microphones). This ensures that observers and Keck night staff (OAs and SAs) are able to communicate efficiently during the night.

In addition to the coming Zoom transition, we have recently made some changes to the Remote Observing request form that should make submissions quicker, easier and less error-prone. The form now prompts you to choose your request start date from a calendar select, after which you can then select your observing program from a dropdown list. This will auto-fill many of the fields for you such as Telescope, Instrument, Allocating Institution, Requestor info, and PI info. For an even faster start, click the ‘Submit Request’ link next to a program in your table summary of approved programs on your Observer homepage. More improvements are planned in the near future, including further streamlining of the approval process, better management of program Co-observers, as well as improvements to the remote VNC launch scripts. This work is being done by our Scientific Software Group in concert with upgrades to our telescope schedule database.