Networking observers and observatories with remote telescope markup language

Abstract

Remote Telescope Markup Language (RTML) is an XML-based protocol for the transport of the high-level description of a set of observations to be carried out on a remote, robotic or service telescope. We describe how RTML is being used in a wide variety of contexts: the transport of service and robotic observing requests in the <i>Hands-On Universe</i>^TM, <i>ACP, eSTAR,</i> and <i>MONET</i> networks; how RTML is easily combined with other XML protocols for more localized control of telescopes; RTML as a secondary observation report format for the IVOA's <i>VOEven</i>t protocol; the input format for a general-purpose observation simulator; and the observatory-independent means for carrying out request transactions for the international <i>Heterogeneous Telescope Network </i>(HTN).