A Guided Tour of Telescope Control Room and Environs

 

This section is intended as an introduction to the ``geography'' of the Telescope Control Room, in order to familiarize the reader with the location of various parts of the telescope control hardware and electronics.

For a start, the Telescope Control Room is located on the third floor of the INT buiding, on the North side of the observing floor and telescope. See Figure  for a ground plan. Access to the control room is via one of two staircases located on the East and West side. The staircase on the West side runs near the library on the first floor. When entering the control room through the West entrance, we encounter the following pieces of hardware (all on your right):

• Instrument Desk and Data Monitor
  These units are part of the instrument control hardware (e.g. for the IPCS) and the data acquisition system, and as such, do not function in the control of the INT itself. The ``Data Monitor'' consists of an ICS terminal of the PE 3210 Instrument Computer and a Lexidata display. The astronomer normally sits at this terminal with students sitting at the observer's feet and the support astronomer standing behind the chair. An important item at the top of the IPCS control desk is the instrument MIMIC display. A MOTOROLA EXORSET stands on a trolley to the right of the desk. It is not part of the regular instrument-control system, but is a valuable aid in diagnosing faults on the A&G box and Spectrographs.
• Control Desk
  This is the large panel with push buttons, TV monitors, keyboards, displays, etc, and has everything to do with the INT. It is the fiefdom of the Telescope Operator. A diagram of its layout is shown in Figure . There are, starting from the left, four sections, which each control a separate subsystem:
  1. The System Status Panel, which shows you everything about the system's health and holds the alarm lights. In the top left-hand corner is the emergency STOP. Here one also finds switches for telescope power, for the selection of computer or engineering mode, and the Dome lights. There is a monitor to which the Operator can route any of a selection of displays: the Information, Autoguider, or MIMIC display, or the digitized image from the Grinnell integrating TV system.
  2. The System Control Panel (SCP): A group of push buttons and a handset which enable function such as slew, offset, or tracking adjustments. The monitor here always carries the Information Display.
  3. Autoguider Panel: The autoguider is controlled by its own micro processor with the buttons in the lower part. Above those is the data-logging monitor, which is driven by the IBM PC standing on top of the desk, and interfaces with both the MIMIC display and the Information Display. Further, at the top of the desk are the Beckmann displays of RA, Dec, Zenith Distance, LST and UTC.
  4. Acquisition and Guidance Panel (AGP): A group of push buttons which control the movement of the TV camera and the Guide Probes in the A & G box. On top are four miniature monitors which carry the analogue TV pictures. Below them is the Grinnel digitising TV image display.

• User Interface
  The terminal used by the Telescope Operator to interact with telescope-control software. It consists of a VT320 terminal and currently lives on a trolley standing to the left of the Control Desk. Pointing instructions and Data input, e.g. catalogues, to the telescope-control program are via this terminal.
• Engineering Rack
  A tall blue rack standing on the east side near the observing floor window. It serves for manual control of telescope functions during start up or a top-end or instrument change. The monitor on top is slaved to the one in the left-hand bay of the Control Desk. Standing right beside the Rack is the:
• Weather Monitor
  Which tells you all about how things are outside. Most annoying here are the humidity meter and the anemometer, which sometimes persuade the Telescope Operator to close the dome, i.e. when the relative humidity is more than 90 percent, and/or the wind speed rises above 80km/h.
• System Console
  The VT320 terminal used by the Telescope Operator to communicate with the PE 3220 telescope computer at the system level, e.g. to start up the telescope control software. The terminal currently stands on a desk on the far side of the Control Room window, as seen from the Control Desk.
• VAX terminal and Instrument Computer terminal
  Both stand on a desk at the far (east) end of the control room. The terminal to the PE3210 Instrument Computer should never be used during observing, as using it can slow down, or even halt, the data taking. The VAX terminal has nothing to do with the INT. However, you can access the VAX 8300 with it, so that you can read your email during long exposures.

Further, notice against the wall opposite the Control Desk the bookcase with various manuals and other documentation, and the notice board (read it !). Please return the manuals tidily after use. Apart from the Control Room one might familiarize oneself with:

• Observing Floor
  During observing, access to the observing floor is normally only needed to change optical components of the IDS. In order to keep those components at ambient temperature, they are stored in a steel cupboard standing against the SE wall. Unless observers are thoroughly familiar with the IDS, they should leave such changes to their support astronomer.
• CLIP Centre
  This is a temperature-controlled clean room on the floor below the console room, west of the void, near the west staircase, which houses the Perkin Elmer 3220 Telescope Computer (See section ) and other telescope hardware and electronics, such as the power amplifiers for the telescope drive and the autoguider electronics. There is a second Local (System) Terminal for local control of Telescope Computer. The CLIP Centre also houses the Time Service.
• The Instrument Computer Room This is the room directly on your left when you enter the Control Room. It houses the Perkin Elmer 3210 Instrument Computer, which handles the data acquisition (section ). The computer comes with two tape decks, an EGLE disk drive, a line printer and a system console. There is also a rack with a fresh supply of magnetic tapes, for you to take home with excellent data.

  
Figure: Ground plan of Observing Floor and INT Control Room

  
Figure: The Telescope Control Desk