Subaru telescope control system simulator

Russell D. Kackley; Nickolas E. K. Rosenberg; Eric Jeschke; Takeshi Inagaki

doi:10.1117/12.2560532

13 December 2020 Subaru telescope control system simulator

Russell D. Kackley, Nickolas E. K. Rosenberg, Eric Jeschke, Takeshi Inagaki

Proceedings Volume 11452, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy VI; 114522S (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2560532
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2020, Online Only

Conference Poster

Abstract

The Subaru Telescope recently celebrated its 20th year of operation. Despite that lengthy period of successful operation, it has never had a proper simulator for its telescope control system. This fact complicates the development and testing of observing scripts that need to send commands and receive realistic feedback from both telescope and instrument systems. The Subaru telescope control system was developed by a subcontractor and there was no requirement for it to be able to run in simulation mode. Furthermore, the source code is proprietary and is not accessible by current Subaru software engineers. These two facts greatly complicated the development of a telescope simulator. Prior to the current effort, the telescope simulator consisted of a “yes-man” interface, i.e., the rudimentary simulator would just respond that it received the command but would not simulate telescope motion or set any status items to provide feedback to the observing scripts. The telescope simulator developed in this effort currently simulates the following components: telescope and instrument rotator motion, focal station configuration, autoguide camera images and pointing errors, as well as facility hardware like dome shutters and mirror covers. We have plans to further refine all those components and implement features like simulated environmental conditions based on historical weather data. The simulator has already proven useful in testing observation scripts. In addition, the simulator will also be a good training aid for new telescope operators.

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Russell D. Kackley, Nickolas E. K. Rosenberg, Eric Jeschke, and Takeshi Inagaki "Subaru telescope control system simulator", Proc. SPIE 11452, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy VI, 114522S (13 December 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2560532

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