Gianluca Chiozzi works at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere in Munich (ESO). He has been heavily involved in the design and implementation of the Common Software and Telescope Control Software for all major ESO projects (VLT, ALMA and now the E-ELT) since 1994. He is now working primarily on the control software architecture for the E-ELT project, back to "real work" after 5 years of line management as head of the Control and Instrumentation Software Department. Before ESO he worked at the IBM Technical and Scientific Research Center in Milan.
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You will have access to both the presentation and article (if available).
• The need of introducing new features to satisfy the requirements of observing with the Adaptive Optics Facility and to benefit other Adaptive Optics systems.
• Managing hardware and software obsolescence.
• Making the system more maintainable and expandable by integrating off-the-shelf hardware solutions.
The new ASM integrates:
• A new Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM) paired with a Multi Aperture Scintillation Sensor (MASS) to measure the vertical distribution of turbulence in the high atmosphere and its characteristic velocity.
• A new SLOpe Detection And Ranging (SLODAR) telescope, for measuring the altitude and intensity of turbulent layers in the low atmosphere.
• A water vapour radiometer to monitor the water vapour content of the atmosphere.
• The old weather tower, which is being refurbished with new sensors. The telescopes and the devices integrated are commercial products and we have used as much as possible the control system from the vendors. The existing external interfaces, based on the VLT standards, have been maintained for full backward compatibility. All data produced by the system are directly fed in real time into a relational database. A completely new web-based display replaces the obsolete plots based on HP-UX RTAP. We analyse here the architectural and technological choices and discuss the motivations and trade-offs.
This will count as one of your downloads.
You will have access to both the presentation and article (if available).
This course provides an analysis of the advantages and requirements for an integrated software infrastructure for observatories and similar scientific facilities. It provides a common framework for application software that can range from control to data analysis applications. Currently available and emerging technologies are evaluated and compared. The course concentrates on the architecture of an application framework necessary for such an infrastructure and on the impact on scalability, maintainability and reuse. Many practical examples will be given based on the ALMA Common Software, a CORBA-based, open source solution used by ALMA and other projects.
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