Deployment
From EStar
Initial deployment
After the sucessful completion of the prototype demonstrator project the next generation of software was deployed, with the collaboration of the Joint Astronomy Center (JAC) in Hawaii, onto both UKIRT and the JCMT. Our inital end-to-end test, with the first observations requested by the intelligent agent software being carried out on UKIRT, took place on the 26th of August 2003.
Current deployment
Current work on the eSTAR project is built around Gamma-ray bursters and microlensing planet searches. These are very natural projects for an automated system, since they require rapid reaction to events, which it would be hard to achieve if there was a human "in the loop". Gamma-ray bursts are detected by satellite instruments, and the aim of a world-wide network is to obtain follow-up optical observations as quickly as possible. The technical challenge here is to pass the co-ordinates as rapidly as possible from satellite to observatory. The current state-of-the art here are bespoke systems with very rapid response such as RAPTOR/TALONS and ROTSE. However it should be noted that, while slower than the rapid response systems, the eSTAR system is more flexible allowing a greater range of follow-up options.
Microlensing is a more complex problem, requiring two stages of alert. First one must detect that a star is undergoing a microlensing event, and then detect that it is "anomalous", suggesting the presence of a planet. Then very frequent observations are required over periods of hours to days. Speed of response is less important (minutes rather than seconds), but often several events are occurring at once, presenting a complex scheduling problem of maximising the chances of detecting a planet by giving the maximum coverage given to the events currently in progress which are most likely to yield planets.
Gamma-ray burst follow-up
The eSTAR project provides a link between SWIFT and ground based telescopes by making use of the emerging field of intelligent agent technology to provide crucial autonomous decision making in software. Now deployed onto UKIRT for this purpose, it makes it the largest telescope in the world with an automatic response system for chasing GRBs.
Since all aspects of an observation programme at the JAC are either software readable or software controllable this allows the eSTAR software to fully specify an MSB. Therefore when the system receives an alert from Swift it can place an MSB directly into the queue as a high priority target of opportunity (TOO), which is seen when the observer next requests an observation. When the observer takes the data, it is automatically reduced in real time by the ORAC-DR system, and the fully reduced data is returned to the eSTAR software. This allows UKIRT observers to get on target within minutes of the burst occurring, and potentially allows automatic evaluation and further follow-up of the initial first-look data.
The first successful observations by eSTAR using UKIRT were of GRB 050716 where the system responded to the SWIFT XRT position alert and queued observations at UKIRT by +48 seconds after the initial alert was received from SWIFT. Unfortunately operational difficulties meant that these observations were not carried out until +56 minutes after the initial alert. Despite this, in future it should be possible to reduce this time to target down to under 5 minutes.
Registered users can monitor the status 
of the GRB observing programme on UKIRT online in real time.
Hunting for exo-planets
The discovery of extra-solar planets is one of the most important and exciting events in contemporary astrophysics. We now know that 5% of nearby sun-like stars harbour planetary systems very unlike our own. The existence of close-in giant planets, many with highly elliptical orbits, has transformed our ideas about how planetary systems form and evolve. The number and variety of extra-solar planets should expand greatly in the next decade as observers bring new search techniques online, and the emerging patterns will continue to drive the rapidly developing theory. Searches for Earth-like planets may reach fruition in 5-10 years, and a search for life on nearby habitable planets may occur in about 15-20 years, if such planets are relatively abundant.
Microlensing is currently the faster and cheapest way to search for cool planets It is this technique that is being utilised by eSTAR and RoboNet-1.0 to intensively monitor large numbers of Galactic Bulge microlensing events. The method is most sensitive to cool planets, 1-5 AU from the lens stars and is the only ground-based technique that is currently capable of discovering Earth-mass planets.
Registered users can monitor the status of the exo-planet observing programme on Robonet-1.0 online in real time.