Automated Telescope Scheduling

The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, commonly known as GMRT, is the world's largest low frequency radio telescope. Being a rare resource, efficient planning of GMRT is needed. Planning consists of scheduling a pre-selected large collection of scientific proposals up to half a year in advance. Scheduling becomes complex due to the variety of astronomical, equipment and logistical constraints. The goal is to schedule each observation to appropriate time slots so that constraints violation is minimized. We have developed a scheduler software named GSCHED to assist in scheduling and to increase the utilization of GMRT.