The SKA observation control system

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) on the brink of entering its fully operational phase, its suite of telescope control software has matured significantly towards the fully fledged control system intended to meet the demands of the user community. In this paper the authors present an overview of the design and implementation of the SALT Telescope Control System (TCS); detailing its main components and the interfaces between them – specifically in relation to the Observation Control System (OCS) that will allow the SALT to be used in an efficient queue-scheduled fashion. Finally, the capabilities and constraints of the design are highlighted to guide the SALT user community in preparing proposals that make optimal use of the available telescope time. Keywords: SALT, telescope control, queue-scheduling, science database, proposal tools 1. INTRODUCTION The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 10-metre class optical telescope situated at the South African Astronomical Observatory’s facility near Sutherland in the Northern Cape Province. The optical design (based on the Hobby Eberly Telescope (HET) in Texas) uses a segmented, spherical primary mirror combined with a spherical aberration corrector (SAC) (four additional mirrors) that delivers a flat focal plane 160mm (10 arc minutes) in diameter at one of four instrument ports