Status display system for the William Herschel Telescope

Lewis R. Jones; Mark C. Jeffries

doi:10.1117/12.19105

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1 July 1990 Status display system for the William Herschel Telescope

Lewis R. Jones, Mark C. Jeffries

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Proceedings Volume 1235, Instrumentation in Astronomy VII; (1990) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.19105
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation for the 21st Century, 1990, Tucson, AZ, United States

Abstract

The data acquisition and control systems for the William Herschel Telescope use a "mimic" display to present an easily assimilated view of the status of the telescope, its instruments and detectors. This display is specified in a set of data files that can easily be modified to reflect any changes to the system. A mimic description language, developed at the RGO, is used to describe individual "pages" of the complete mimic display. Such pages can represent various levels of complexity, from complete subsystems down to individual mechanisms. Extensive use is made of colour graphics to allow the user to see the state of any item on the display at a glance. The mimic system also uses colour to warn the user of errors occurring in pages which are not currently displayed, and by this means can indicate or even force the display of those pages to which the user should refer as a matter of priority. The mimic display is directly driven by the low-level processes responsible for controlling the instruments and detectors. The location of the information to be displayed is retrieved from globally accessible memory and displayed according to the prescription for that group of items in the mimic description file.

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Lewis R. Jones and Mark C. Jeffries "Status display system for the William Herschel Telescope", Proc. SPIE 1235, Instrumentation in Astronomy VII, (1 July 1990); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.19105

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