TCS Commands

The IMPB Observing System offers a command line interface which provides nearly complete control over the William Herschel Telescope.  The interface is implemented using the standard suite of software employed elsewhere in the observatory.  These are the so-called TCS-clients. These clients provide a command set which in most cases is identical to the equivalent command typed directly at the TCS command console. However, there are a few exceptions, most notably object which is equivalent to the TCS command enter.

Other than to briefly document the command line arguments further information is outside the scope of this manual. See the WHT TCS User Manual for more details.

• add: write the current contents of the TCS edit source data area as a new entry in the TCS user catalog.
• agstop: turn off TCS acceptance of autoguider corrections.
• aperture: offset the telescope such that an object moves by a vector fixed in the local plane.
• gocat: retrieve the entry for the named source from the TCS catalog and send telescope to track that source.
• guide: turn on TCS acceptance of autoguider corrections.
• next: send the telescope to track the source specified in the TCS edit source data area.
• object:  enter new source data into the TCS edit source data area.
• offset: offsets the telescope by a given amount in right ascension aand declination.
• park: park telescope.
• point: control logging of TCS encoder data.
• rotate: move the rotator to the specified mount or sky position angle, or change its mode of operation.
• tcs: send arbitrary USER command string to the TCS (see user command below)
• tcsstat: report TCS status information.:
• user: send arbitrary USER command string to the TCS (see tcs command above).
• whtfocus: focus telescope.

See also: Command Dictionary