Does php have the ability to do this:
Let's say you have an observatory. To start a photographing run, you would load the page and click a button. This would make the server start another script, which would run in the background. The page would then update every second (or whatever) with the current information about the observatory.
What I am wondering is if PHP can run in the background like that, and still provide updated status information on page refresh.
What you need is 'AJAX' (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) .. And this is not PHP's ability. The client side script will send asynchronous requests to the server side script, after the page is loaded. It (client side script) will receive responses, and update the page accordingly.
Have a look at these:
Also have a look at this:
I guess you are looking for a daemon written in PHP. There's lot info on the net under that term, e.g. re-cycledair.com/php-dark-arts-daemonizing-a-process
