Remote Observing: Equipment, Methods and Experiences at the Dark Sky Observatory

Details Remote Observing: Equipment, Methods and Experiences at the Dark Sky Observatory Remote Observing: Equipment, Methods and Experiences at the Dark Sky Observatory

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21347402c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #474.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.427

Computer Science

Performance

Scientific paper

Over the last few years we have experimented with remote observing with the 32-inch telescope at our Dark Sky Observatory. We have used relatively inexpensive X10 control modules and software to control many electrical and electronic circuits and devices. User access is via a combination of Microsoft Remote Desktop and RealVNC. X10's ActiveHome Pro software provides the interface for device control.
Data acquisition has been with a Photometrics CH250 CCD camera under control of PMIS. Our new imaging camera is an Apogee U42 controlled by MaximDL. In both cases the control over the Internet is by the RD/VNC interface. All of this goes through an ordinary DSL connection at the observatory and provides surprisingly good performance even with the user having only DSL access at home as well.
Field acquisition for cases of telescope misalignment with the sky after an instrument changeover are provided by an ImagingSource DMK 41AU02-USB camera on a Vixen 80mm f/5 auxiliary telescope. In some cases, to prevent crashing PMIS due to buffer overrun/interrupt issues, the field alignment is monitored using a streaming Linksys webcam that looks at the data-acquisition PC's monitor. Autoguiding uses an SBIG ST-402 camera and either CCDOPS or MaximDL. While we have only done imaging via remote use, we are working to develop control of the spectrograph as well.
Weather conditions are monitored with a combination of a Davis Vantage Pro weather station, a Boltwood cloud/precipitation detector, daytime webcams and an infrared-sensitive SBIG Meteor camera for night views of the sky.
We are grateful for support for this work from National Science Foundation grants AST-0520812 and AST-0722491.

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