The refurbishment is in progress. Telescope pointing and tracking is now
controlled by a LINUX PC with a typical pointing accuracy of better than
0.5 arcmin.
Work done so far:
-
Replacement of both multi-motor drive units with single industry standard
motors. This includes motor control units which are connected to the control
PC by the CAN bus using the OpenCAN protocol.
-
Replacement of the analog encoders by digital encoders mounted directly
on-axis (ha and dec). Type: Heidenhain RON806 + IK121A PC-board, resolution:
0.04 arcsec, accuracy: 1 arcsec.
-
Telescope positioning and tracking is fully controlled by software running
on the LINUX PC (Author: Pascal
Hirsch). The astrometry is based on SLALIB.
The TPOINT pointing model
is used to compensated misalignments, flexures etc.
Work to be done:
-
Optimisation of the pointing model for specific instruments (focal reducer,
spectrograph).
-
GUI for the telescope software.
-
Control of the dome, telescope focus. We will have a distributed system
based on microcontrollers and CAN bus.
-
Guiding camera.
-
Coordination of telescope control and instrument control for automated
observing procedures.
Last Update: August 7, 2000
Klaus Reif (E-mail: reif@astro.uni-bonn.de)