Autonomous observation scheduling in astronomy

Rapid technology development has opened up exciting new possibilities in astronomy with larger, more sensitive telescopes that cover large frequency ranges. Telescopes have become bigger and more complex, housing multiple instruments and having wide ranging science aims. These technological advances and cheaper internet makes remote collaboration across astronomies, with multi-wavelength astronomy, quick follow-up and network observation strategies, easy to achieve. In turn, each telescope still has to deal with weather and dynamic conditions on oversubscribed systems. It is thus natural to turn to advanced multi-purpose scheduling software development in order to enhance scientific return in an effort to identify better solutions. In this paper we present a strawman Python scheduler based on a modular design for scheduling astronomy observations that is easy to adapt to the specific requirements of an observation, but still general enough to optimize in a simple evaluation schema very similar to dynamic scheduling strategies already being used in so many industrial areas.