Billy Mahoney

email: mahoney AT cfht DOT hawaii DOT edu
Database Specialist @ Canada France Hawaii Telescope Corporation
Responsible for the QSO database, telescope scheduling software, site monitoring instruments, miscellaneous software engineering tasks.

I am a Jedi knight doing part-time work as a simple human.

Updated 2021 July 12

results from CFHT site seeing data into this seeing paper.

Latest CFHT site seeing work and results available at this location.

A joint effort to apply machine learning techniques to the CFHT site seeing and image quality data is underway. The source data files for this exercise are located here.

Old updates... Deployed new exposure time calculators for all the CFHT instruments: CFHT Instrument ETC


CFHT Dome was modified with vents to aid in flushing thermal turbulence from the optical path of the telescope. In theory, the 'seeing' should improve and approach the levels of free-seeing reported by the MKAM instrument. The early indications are this is happening. Early Vented Seeing Data

all sky thermal imaging data of a contrail from a flight over Mauna Kea (animated gif). thermal and visible images side by side.

all sky thermal imaging data reduced for color temperature analysis. a video timelapse of a cloudy night over Mauna kea.

ISS (Internation Space Station) traverses the morning sky over Mauna Kea (animated gif from an all sky visible camera)

Cassandra 1.2.6 cluster is operational running KairosDB for time-series data: target data is the atmospheric and sky conditions data set

Time lapse, cirrus clouds over Mauna Kea 09/27/2012

SPIE Astronomy July 2012 - Autonomous Real-time All-sky Cloud Detection over Mauna Kea

ASO - Scheduling Observations with a genetic algorithm - conceptual design

Dome DIMM data has been updated 08/03/2011, check here.

mahout updated 5/26/11, mahout version 3 installed by binary, working on the hadoop cluster, examples successfully tested

Hadoop et al updated 5/23/11 - hadoop-0.20-append installed, hbase installed
    Hadoop, HFS, Mapreduce, Hbase built for Debian 'squeeze'distros, install directions

ASIVA - All Sky Infrared and Visible sky monitor
    ASIVA data page    Latest mid IR image   Movies
    Track CFHT with ASIVA (AI - uses SVM and KNN)
    Mid IR and Visible processing (AI - uses SVM and KNN)
    update 02/04/2011:    visible camera online  First Night's Visible Camera Movie.
    update 01/31/2011:    Now determining and reporting global cloud coverage percentage.
    update 01/28/2011:    Usage of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for regional and pixel level cloud determination.
    update 10/20/2010:    ASIVA installed on Mauna Kea.

ASO - Automated Service Observing
    TFA Conference 2011 Waikoloa    Presentation ASO Presentation (pdf version)
    User's Meeting 2010    Poster CFHT User's Meeting 2010 - Automated Service Observing
    ASO Demo - Automated Observation Validation using KNN a java applet

Current Sky Conditions   Dome DIMM, Mauna Kea Seeing Monitor, ASIVA, Cloudsensor, All sky camera

DIMM   Basic DIMM Chart, Detailed DIMM chart

Cloud sensor   Cloudsensor web application

QSO Web Applications   Phase 2 web application      Night reports web application      Phase 1 web application

Presentations, reports

     ASO paper for TFA conference
     DIMM Presentation 2010 User's meeting
     NGVS mentions my work
     ASIVA board presentation 2010
     Automated Service Observing Proposal 2010
     Dome DIMM report Oct 2008
     Dome DIMM report April 2008

Contact: email: m __ a __ h __ o __ n __ e __ y __ @ __ c __ f __ h __ t __ . __ h __ a __ w __ a __ i __ i __ . __ e __ d __ u