Dear all,
I've been meaning to send this for ages but never got round to it...
You may be interested to learn that the 10m Keck II telescope (which,
along with its Keck I twin, is the largest optical telescope in the
world) achieved first light with its full complement of 36 hexagonal
mirrors in January 1996. An intensive commissioning effort continued
through April 1996, culminating with the taking of science quality
images with Keck I's Low Resolution Imaging Spectrograph. The telescope
is now being used for engineering observing one week in two as the
primary mirror quality is optimized, and user interfaces are integrated
and improved. The telescope will begin full-time scheduled science
observations on 1st October 1996.
The entire telescope control system is implemented using EPICS (note:
the mirror control system is not EPICS) and runs on a pair of 25MHz
Force CPU/40s. A 40Hz interrupt triggers the telescope's azimuth and
elevation axis servo processing, which is "broken out" into a total of
61 records processed at 40Hz. The substantial amount of algorithmic
processing necessary in order to implement a telescope control system
has resulted in the writing of eleven custom records, some of which are
potentially applicable to other telescope control systems and others of
which are re-used in several places within the control system.
This project was completed in 17 months from start of design (and
first installation of EPICS) to the taking of science quality images
(note that I don't say "completion"!). This is a tribute to the quality
and robustness of the EPICS system and to the very high quality help
that we received both from Los Alamos consultants and from the EPICS
community in general. We now have a simpler and superior system to that
currently controlling Keck I (a Keck I retrofit is planned for early
1997) and an extensible upgrade path to adaptive optics systems
currently under development, and coordinated use of the two telescopes
(and up to four auxiliary telescopes) for interferometry.
If anyone would like further details, there are a paper and slides
from a recent conference at URLs:
ftp://ftp.keck.hawaii.edu/pub/wlupton/hvenWflPaper.fm.ps.gz
ftp://ftp.keck.hawaii.edu/pub/wlupton/hvenWflSlides.fm.ps.gz
or please don't desitate to contact me.
Cheers,
William
--------------- William Lupton ([email protected]) ---------------
Home: PO Box 7135, Work: W. M. Keck Observatory, 65-1120 Mama-
Kamuela, HI 96743, USA lahoa Highway, Kamuela, HI 96743, USA
(808) 885 3475 (808) 885 7887, (808) 885 4464 (fax)
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