Keck II Telescope Control System

William Lupton; Hilton Lewis; Kevin Tsubota; Allan Honey; Sarah Quady

doi:10.1117/12.268982

21 March 1997 Keck II Telescope Control System

William Lupton, Hilton Lewis, Kevin Tsubota, Allan Honey, Sarah Quady

Proceedings Volume 2871, Optical Telescopes of Today and Tomorrow; (1997) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.268982
Event: Optical Telescopes of Today and Tomorrow, 1996, Landskrona/Hven, Sweden

Abstract

The experimental physics and industrial control system (EPICS) originated in the high energy physics community and has been used for several years to control accelerators. It is now in use or soon to be in use at several observatories around the world. In 1995, it was decided that Keck II telescope would have a new EPICS-based control system rather than use a copy of the Keck I system. This decision was made because it was felt that EPICS provided a superior software infrastructure to that developed for Keck I, and that it would scale well to encompass adaptive optics and eventual use of the two telescopes for interferometry. The new control system was developed throughout 1995 and the early part of 1996, leading to first light in January 1996, making it the first fully EPICS-controlled telescope control system in the world. This paper describes how EPICS has been used to implement the control system, including a detailed discussion of the axes control, pointing and timing system, and of how they interact with each other.

Citation Download Citation

William Lupton, Hilton Lewis, Kevin Tsubota, Allan Honey, and Sarah Quady "Keck II Telescope Control System", Proc. SPIE 2871, Optical Telescopes of Today and Tomorrow, (21 March 1997); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.268982

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