From toomey@ifa.hawaii.edu Wed Jul 17 11:27:52 2002 Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 16:40:38 -1000 From: Douglas Toomey To: denault@galileo.ifa.hawaii.edu Cc: John Rayner , Mark Chun Subject: AO mods to support observing [The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] Hi, There will be continuing work with the AO system to understand and improve performance. Untikl we get some nights with good seeing it will be hard to evaluate the performance. But I think we are at a point were I want to start on the specific chores needed to support normal observing with AO. This email will try to identify those items I believe are needed to support normal observations. 1 Tip/tilt off load to TCS 2 Focus off load to hexapod These first two need some work to define them. Mark Chun has been doing some modeling on these issues that may also require some changes to the off load of tilt from the DM. That aside we need to keep track of the average tilt and ask the TCS to do an offset when the average tilt exceeds x% of the PZT stroke. This probably needs to happen every few minutes. We also need to track average focus term. This will be determined by processing the primary out. When the focus exceeds a certain level we need to send a command to the hexepod to off load that focus. 3 A simplified control window We will need a simplified control window for the operators to use. I will work with you on defining this. 4 Observer ability to manually offset with loop on The steering mirror already does this. We need to make the units readout in arcsecond and indicate north, east etc. when the operator is running AO the observer will need to also have a window that lets him/her to offset. 5 Observer ability to beam switch within ao aquisition field When the science instrument commands a beam switch that is not so big that the B beam puts the star out of the AO acquisiton field the AO system should pause and then offset to the new position using the steering mirror and then unpause. 6 Observer ability to beam switch outside of aquisition field If the beam switch will take the image out of the acquisition field AO should just pause (before the telescope moves) when in the B beam and then resume when back inthe A beam. 7 Allowing for dithering from instrument macro When the instrument dithers(sends an offset from a macro) the AO should pause and then move the steering mirror by the dither amount and then resume. 8 Allowing for the TCS offset window to work with the loop on. The TCS offset window in NSFCAM is very useful it would be good if it would still work. That means that when AO is on the TCS offset window would really command the steering mirror since that is the only way to move the image when the loop is on. Rough Priorities A Tip/tilt off load to TCS B Focus off load to hexapod B Simplified control window B Observer ability to manually offset with loop on A Observer ability to beam switch within ao aquisition field A Observer ability to beam switch outside of aquisition field A Allowing for dithering from instrument macro B Allowing for the TCS offset window to work with the loop on Doug