The eSTAR network – agent architectures for astronomy

The eSTAR Project uses intelligent agent technologies to carry out resource discovery, submit observation requests and analyze the reduced data returned from a meta-network of robotic telescopes. Linking ground based telescopes with astronomical satellites, and using the emerging field of intelligent agent architectures to provide crucial autonomous decision making in software, the project has succeeded in combining data archives and research class telescopes, along with distributed computing nodes, to build an ad-hoc peer-to-peer heterogeneous network of resources. We present the current operations paradigm of the eSTAR network and describe the direction in which the project intends to develop over the next few years. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)