The current index/collimation procedure is to go to two stars, one near the equator and the other high in declination, and measure the guide errors at each one. The PB5/PB6 procedure computes a set of simultaneous equations to derive the collimation (Ch) and index errors (Ih, Id).

I created a program index_collim that does this procedure more accurately. It looks up 4 stars of increasing declination and slews to each one, as we do in the skymap and benchmark programs. It then does a least squares fit of the guide errors from the 4 stars. This should provide an easier to operate and more accurate determination of the collimation and index. The program needs to be tested at the observatory, doing real slews. It then needs to be implemented for the telescope operators. There is a file folder for this program in with the pointing and TCS stuff I left in my office.

It would be easy for someone familiar with the Tcl/Tk windowing toolkit to create a command window for the telescope pointing utilities. This would improve the usability at the observatory immensley.

Currently, the operator has to manually guide the star to the crosshairs on each slew for a sky map. This should be automated using the digitized signal and field output from one of the instruments. As long as the star appears in the field of view, the software would automatically guide it to the reference position and execute the command to the TCS to take the raw guide data and then slew to the next star. The operator would only have to oversee this operation and manually intervene only if a star was not in the field.

Currently, the *.tpt file format generated by the skymap program is not correct. In Pat Wallace's TPOINT document (in with the pointing stuff in my office) he showed the fields in the record as being on separate lines, so I coded them that way. Actually, I was supposed to read Pat's mind that all the fields should be on the same line, with a <CR> between records. Andrew Pickles made a utility that converts to the correct format.

I suggest that Andrew be consulted so that the IRTF can make use of the TPOINT files generated by a pointing run to analyze the mount error for its individual components. We have not done so up to now, but should pay more attention to the highly useful TPOINT program.