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Control Systems DIF-FUS Universidad de sonora |
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Overview In the conventional telescopes, the movement of positioning and guidance are controlled in two degrees of freedom. This means that the telescope can obtain images of almost any point of the sky in the firmament positioning the telescope with two angular motions. For the guidance of the telescope it is needed to compensate the rotation movement of our planet. This implies to continously adjust the position of the telescope to maintain the observation point fixed. In solar observations, the positioning and guidance of a telescope is more simple since the apparent movement of the Sun happens only within a small window of observation in the day sky. In these telescopes the positioning and guidance are normally supervised by the operator of the telescope in the site of observation. Therefore additional tasks like monitoring, preventive and corrective maintenance and others in the observatory, are carried out by the personnel in duty. In this project we try to establish a remote control connection and a full-automatic control of the telescope. Therefore we need to automate many of the personnel tasks in conventional observatories. GENERAL CRITERIA FOR THE AUTOMATIZATION It is a well-known fact that the automatization of an industrial process reduces operation costs and increases the productivity. This same philosophy is pretended to be applied in order to automate a telescope, only with slight differences. First, the reduction of costs would allow the University of Sonora to establish a high quality observatory with low costs of operation and maintenance. Second, the productivity in observation hours per day would be higher than conventional observatories, since we are combining the solar observation during the day and astronomical observation at night. This means greater efficiency for a less cost. Third, a reduction of infrastructure costs of the telescope since personnel for its operation would not be required. AUTOMATIZATION The operations of the telescope that must be automated are divided in control, diagnosis and communication: 1) Diagnosis and control of the operation of the solar power plant. 2) Readings of the meteorological variables and diagnosis of the meteorology station for confirmation of the best conditions of operation. 3) Control and diagnosis of opening and close of the cupola of the observatory. 4) Control and diagnosis of the position and guidance of the telescope. 5) ON/OFF of the AC system. 6) Control and diagnosis of the optical and electronic instrumentation of the telescope. 7) Transfering of images and data using a computer communication system. Each one of the control systems will have to respond to manual, remote control and automated instructions. The diagnosis of the systems devices, will have to respond to local and remote instructions in addition to an automatic periodic of programmed diagnosis. GENERAL ACTIVITIES FOR THE AUTOMATIZATION The activities for the automatization of the telescope will be divided in several phases. These activities will be strongly bound to other phases of development of the telescope that due to their nature will precede to some of the phases of automatization. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify four general activities for the automatization of the telescope. The first activity consists of the tests and validations of the circuits of handling of motors and programs for the control and diagnosis of the telescope and the cupola. The second activity will concentrate in the development of the circuits of handling and control of motors and programs for control and diagnosis of the observation systems. As third activity to the necessary circuits of connection for the control and monitoring of the power and weahter monitoring system. The fourth activity will focus to the connection circuits and programs for the transfer of data. All these activities will be impossible without a well planned infrastructure in the mountain. For that reason, the telescope will be installed in a prototype building located in the Hermosillo Campus of the University of Sonora, next to the Solar Station of Observation, EOS (Building 3H). Once the telescope is installed at the place and received the software of control OCASS, there would be a process of testing during a year and a half. Last Update: January 22, 2000. |