Generic Telescope Control System

摘要: A Telescope Control System (TCS) is a software in charge of controlling the hardware that an astronomical observation needs. In the high-level view, a TCS must provide to the Telescope Operator (TO) an accurate presetting, pointing, tracking and focusing. In the low-level view, a TCS must calibrate, control and protect each telescope device to achieve successful observations. Roughly, the main task of a TCS is to control the telescope axes, which can be seen only as a linear control of a few motors and encoders, with some coordinate system transformations. But the automation and sophistication of telescope observations has produced much complex TCSs with several features such as autoguiding, active optics, dome control, meteorologic stations, mirror focusing, etc. Therefore, a TCS turn to be a complex software infrastructure rather than routines on a programmable board as in the early days of the robotic …