TUY 40 Telescope Control System Based on LabVIEW

• Authors: M. Dindar , S. Dindar , E. Kandemir , C. Bayar , S. Helhel , T. Ozisik
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Events and transients are becoming more and more crucial in modern astronomy such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts and so on. VOEvent messages have all information to make the follow-up observations for transients and events which forces the scientists to make robotic observations. Robotic autonomous telescopes usually run under the control of a scheduler, which provides high-level control by selecting astronomical targets for observation. TUY 40 is a new robotic autonomous telescope control system designed by TÜBİTAK National Observatory (TUG). TUY 40 is based on 16 inch Meade LX-200 telescope mount and optical tube without any Meade electronic components and drive motors. The telescope control software developed on open-source Talon software and LabVIEW is presented. The algorithm for telescope control (slewing, tracking, homing etc.) was implemented in National Instruments PXI chassis written in LabVIEW real-time software from scratch. Talon is open-source software based on the GNU/C UNIX platform. A new TCP/IP library was implemented within Talon software to communicate with hard real-time telescope control software in LabVIEW PXI chassis. Initial setup without any permanent pier and polar alignment showed that the pointing error of the telescope has been obtained as 2.22 arcmin (132 arcsec) in RA axis (horizontal axis of the image) and 25 arcsec in Dec axis (vertical axis of the image), and tracking error has been observed as ≈ 4.8 arcsec per second.

Keywords

EN

95.55.Cs; 87.85.St

Discipline

• 95.55.Cs: Ground-based ultraviolet, optical and infrared telescopes
• 87.85.St: Robotics

• Publisher: Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Acta Physica Polonica A
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 128
• Issue: 2B
• Pages: B-73-B-74

Dates

published

2015-8

Contributors

author

M. Dindar

• TÜBİTAK National Observatory, R&D Department, Antalya, Turkey

author

S. Dindar

• TÜBİTAK National Observatory, R&D Department, Antalya, Turkey

author

E. Kandemir

• TÜBİTAK National Observatory, R&D Department, Antalya, Turkey

author

C. Bayar

• TÜBİTAK National Observatory, R&D Department, Antalya, Turkey

author

S. Helhel

• TÜBİTAK National Observatory, R&D Department, Antalya, Turkey
• Akdeniz University, Engineering Faculty, EEE, Antalya, Turkey

author

T. Ozisik

• TÜBİTAK National Observatory, R&D Department, Antalya, Turkey

References

• [1] R.K. Honeycutt, J.E. Kephart, A.A. Hendon, Sky Telescope 56, 495 (1978)
• [2] L.J. Boyd, R.M. Genet, D.S. Hall, Sky Telescope 70, 16 (1985)
• [3] M. Drummond, J. Bresina, W. Edgington, K. Swanson, G. Henry, E. Drascher, Flexible scheduling of automatic telescopes over the internet, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 79, 1995, p. 101
• [4] M. Nekola, R. Hudec, M. Jelínek, P. Kubánek, J. Štrobl, C. Polášek, Adv. Astron. 2010, 1-5 (2010), doi: 10.1155/2010/103986
• [5] Reference Manual for OCAAS (Talon), Version 2.0, 2000. http://astro.physics.uiowa.edu/rigel/manuals/ocaas_manual.pdf

Identifiers

DOI

10.12693/APhysPolA.128.B-73