A universal control system for small telescopes

An open loop stepper motor controller has been designed specifically for the control of small telescopes. The stepper motor driver is controlled by an IBM-type PC with TURBO PASCAL being used to develop the control software. The software has been set up to be driven either by a mouse or the keyboard. A configuration file contains information specific to the geographical location of the telescope and the mechanical details of the telescope drive such as the type of stepper motors used and the gearing ratios on the two axes. This feature allows the system to be easily attached to a variety of telescopes.     

Observing projects for small telescopes

Suggestions and examples are given for photometric and spectrographic programs with 0.5 - 1.0m telescopes, both at poor and at good sites. The importance is stressed of coordination between observers at sites spread over a region or around the world. As an example of the latter, the Whole Earth Telescope group and their successful observing programs are described.     

A Global network of small automated telescopes

Globalizing observations means increasing awareness and participation in astronomical data collection. This involves the ‘astroeconomics’ of observing facilities and their access. How and to what extent can such facilities be ‘globally networked’? This article concentrates on information, costs and values, with a special regard to the low-cost end of the distribution. The inferences are applicable to a wide range of real observing situations.     

Slitless spectrograph for small telescopes: First results

A slitless UBVR spectrograph has been built for use on small telescopes. Test observations on the Zeiss-600 telescope at the Terskol peak demonstrated that the spectrograph is an efficient instrument for studying high-speed processes in variable stars with a high temporal resolution. The spectrograph resolving power R ≈ 100 in the vicinity of λ = 480 nm and the error in the determination of the wavelength is approximately 3 nm. The spectrograph provides a moderate signal-to-noise ratio for stars up to 16 ^m . It permits one to measure equivalent widths of unblended lines down to 0.1 nm. The developed special software based on the theory of quantum statistics makes it possible to detect relative variations in the spectrum of approximately 10^?5–10^?6 of the bolometric flux of the star. Observations with the spectrograph made it possible to detect variations of emissions in Balmer lines and Ca II H, K lines in the EV Lac flare star in the subsecond range. The spectroscopic monitoring permits one to study stellar flares with small amplitude, to carry out a comprehensive colorimetric analysis of flare plasma, and to determine temperatures and sizes of flares in the light intensity maximum. Observations of the transit of the HAT-P-1 B exoplanet demonstrate that the chromospheric activity power of the parent star does not vary during the transit. The slitless spectrograph with a low resolving capacity opens new prospects in studying active processes occurring on stars’ surfaces.     

A CCD‐based guiding and control system for solar telescopes

We describe a system for guiding and control of motion of solar telescopes based on a determination of the position of the full solar disk on a CCD chip. The system computes the position of the disk center and, according to the difference between the instantaneous and required positions, it controls the motion of the telescope to compensate the deviation. The instantaneous position of the disk center is the basic input for the telescope's guiding and coordinate system. Brightness inhomogeneities of the solar limb caused by clouds are checked in real time. The function of the system can be suspended automatically if the clouds degrade the accuracy of guiding. The system also makes possible to check the correct focus and to evaluate the image quality.     

Automatic design of corrector systems for Cassegrain telescopes

According to the method described in reference [1], we have designed a series of corrector systems for Cassegrain telescopes automatically with an electronic computer. The calculations were carried out under the following two conditions: the primary and secondary mirrors have strictly conical surfaces, and the telescope is strictly free from third-order spherical aberration when the corrector systems are taken off. Results in this papercan be converted proportionally to real telescopes of any aperture, while the aberrations expressed in seconds of arc remain unchanged.     

Fast guiding and small telescopes in the 8-m era

Fast guiding may improve the images delivered by telescopes. It may be implemented fairly cheaply and offers an upgrade path to smaller telescopes, which will make them more useful in the 8-m era. However, the detailed performance of a fast guiding system must depend on many parameters and this makes it difficult to assess its precise scientific benefits. This paper provides a comprehensive mathematical framework for calculating the performance of fast guiding systems. A range of models has been calculated that illustrates the benefits for telescopes of various sizes in various wavelength ranges. Three measures of performance have been examined: FWHM, 50 per cent encircled energy diameter and energy concentration in a 0.35-arcsec aperture. Typical gains over natural seeing are found to be in the 20 to 40 per cent range at useful levels of sky coverage. Other things being equal, small telescopes do not benefit as much as large ones from fast guiding. The sensitivity of these benefits to assumptions has also been examined, and this highlights the need to operate in the correct wavelength range for the aperture in question. The largest perturbations to ideal models are likely to be the result of telescope windshake and the outer scale of turbulence. If there is appreciable windshake, fast guiding will yield larger benefits than expected from the natural seeing. A short outer scale (a few hundred metres) will, however, lose most of the gains.     

A method for manufacturing and testing large mirrors for space telescopes

A method for finishing the surface shape of large mirrors for space telescopes that are accurate up to λ/20 is described, as well as training of the method for manufacturing a systall mirror 2.6 m in diameter for the ZTSH telescope.     

Perspectives and challenges for future telescopes

At the celebration of 400 years of telescopic observations, it is appropriate to consider future ground-based facilities enabled by continuing technological developments, and driven by astronomical questions which are amongst the most fundamental in science and are of enormous interest to the general public.     

A study of focusing telescopes for soft gamma rays

A study is presented on the feasibility of using Bragg diffraction from crystals to focus soft gamma-rays in the energy range up to 2 MeV. For astrophysics this band contains several very interesting gamma-ray lines from novae, supernovae and X- and gamma-ray transients.The study concludes that, in the energy range between 300 and 1300 keV, a Bragg-telescope with a focal length of about 50 meters could achieve a sensitivity for point sources which is between 5 and 10 times better than that currently expected for the ESA/NASA INTEGRAL-mission/1/. In addition, the angular resolution of the Bragg telescope would also be an order of magnitude better. Despite the large physical dimensions of the telescope, its feasibility does not seem out of reach. The requirements do not go appreciably beyond those of other scientific projects which have been studied and found technically feasible by ESA and NASA /2, 3/. The Bragg-telescope therefore may become the logical next step in soft gamma-ray astronomy following a sensitive survey project like INTEGRAL.     

A blind deconvolution method for ground based telescopes and Fizeau interferometers

In the case of ground-based telescopes equipped with adaptive optics systems, the point spread function (PSF) is only poorly known or completely unknown. Moreover, an accurate modeling of the PSF is in general not available. Therefore in several imaging situations the so-called blind deconvolution methods, aiming at estimating both the scientific target and the PSF from the detected image, can be useful. A blind deconvolution problem is severely ill-posed and, in order to reduce the extremely large number of possible solutions, it is necessary to introduce sensible constraints on both the scientific target and the PSF.In a previous paper we proposed a sound mathematical approach based on a suitable inexact alternating minimization strategy for minimizing the generalized Kullback–Leibler divergence, assuring global convergence. In the framework of this method we showed that an important constraint on the PSF is the upper bound which can be derived from the knowledge of its Strehl ratio. The efficacy of the approach was demonstrated by means of numerical simulations.In this paper, besides improving the previous approach by the use of a further constraint on the unknown scientific target, we extend it to the case of multiple images of the same target obtained with different PSFs. The main application we have in mind is to Fizeau interferometry. As it is known this is a special feature of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). Of the two expected interferometers for LBT, one, LINC-NIRVANA, is forthcoming while the other, LBTI, is already operating and has provided the first Fizeau images, demonstrating the possibility of reaching the resolution of a 22.8 m telescope. Therefore the extension of our blind method to this imaging modality seems to be timely.The method is applied to realistic simulations of imaging both by single mirrors and Fizeau interferometers. Successes and failures of the method in the imaging of stellar fields are demonstrated in simple cases. These preliminary results look promising at least in specific situations. The IDL code of the proposed method is available on request and will be included in the forthcoming version of the Software Package AIRY (v.6.1).     

VAMOS: A pathfinder for the HAWC gamma-ray observatory

VAMOS¹ was a prototype detector built in 2011 at an altitude of 4100 m a.s.l. in the state of Puebla, Mexico. The aim of VAMOS was to finalize the design, construction techniques and data acquisition system of the HAWC observatory. HAWC is an air-shower array currently under construction at the same site of VAMOS with the purpose to study the TeV sky. The VAMOS setup included six water Cherenkov detectors and two different data acquisition systems. It was in operation between October 2011 and May 2012 with an average live time of 30%. Besides the scientific verification purposes, the eight months of data were used to obtain the results presented in this paper: the detector response to the Forbush decrease of March 2012, and the analysis of possible emission, at energies above 30 GeV, for long gamma-ray bursts GRB111016B and GRB120328B.     

Novel photosensors for neutrino detectors and telescopes

The volume and the photosensitive area of next generation detectors of the numerous rarely occurring phenomena will greatly exceed the sizes of the current experiments. These phenomena include cosmic neutrinos, atmospheric neutrinos, long-baseline neutrino beams from accelerators, geo-neutrinos, geo-reactor neutrinos, and hypothetic proton decays. Similar requirements hold for a new type of a large scanning device for homeland security and nuclear proliferation control, and for the future widely accessible medical imaging devices. Photon detectors are the most important component of such detectors. Existing photosensors are based on vacuum tubes and dynode electron multipliers that are essentially hand-made, expensive and nearly impossible to produce in large enough quantities. Silicon detectors are too small for experiments requiring a very large photosensitive area. Our laboratory is developing novel detectors with a large photosensitive area that can be mass-produced, similar to large flat panel TV displays.     

Cosmic GRB 060428C detected in the field of view of the IBIS and SPI telescopes onboard the INTEGRAL observatory and its early afterglow

While analyzing the archival data of the INTEGRAL observatory, we detected and localized a cosmic gamma-ray burst recorded on April 28, 2006, by the IBIS/ISGRI and SPI telescopes in their fields of view. Since the burst was not revealed by the INTEGRAL burst alert system (IBAS), information about its coordinates was not distributed in time and no search for its afterglow was conducted. The burst was recorded by the KONUS/WIND and RHES SI satellites. Its 20–200-keV fluence was 2.3 × 10^?6 erg cm^?2, the peak flux was 3.6 × 10^?7 erg cm^?2 s^?1 (3.9 phot. cm^?2 s^?1). The burst had a complex multipeaked profile and stood out among typical bursts by an increase in its hardness with time. At the flux peak, the spectrum was characterized by a photon index α ? ?1.5 and a peak energy E _p ? 95 keV. The burst lasted for ～12 s, after which its afterglow decaying as a power law with an index γ ～ ?4.5 was observed at energies 15–45 keV. The spectral hardness decreased noticeably during the afterglow.     

A novel hexapod and its prototype for secondary mirror alignment in telescopes

This paper presents a novel hexapod as the adjustment mechanism for a telescope to actively align its secondary mirror. The special hexapod provides six degrees of freedom(6-DOFs) with decoupled translation and rotation. The decoupled kinematic motions are analyzed and commented on as the alignment mechanism of a secondary mirror from an optical alignment point of view. In terms of performance of the adjustment generally required by the secondary mirror in a telescope, we developed a prototype that uses a novel hexapod design with linear micro-displacement actuators. Especially, in order to achieve high precision, flexures were used to build joints for the hexapod to minimize frictions and eliminate backlashes. Based on the specific configuration and dimension of the prototype hexapod,an analytical model of the reachable workspace was built with the constraints defined by limited rotation angles of the flexure-based joints. We used a laser tracker to verify that the hexapod can reach a spherical translation workspace of φ6 mm and a rotation workspace of±1?. The translational repeatability was tested to be around half a μm by laser displacement sensors. In addition, we also measured the axial and lateral stiffnesses of the hexapod to be around 5500 N mm-1 and 1750 N mm-1, respectively. The kinematic analyses and convincing test results jointly encourage implementing the novel hexapod design with decoupled translation and rotation as a favorable alignment mechanism for secondary mirrors in astronomical telescopes.     

A high speed networked signal processing platform for multi-element radio telescopes

A new architecture is presented for a Networked Signal Processing System (NSPS) suitable for handling the real-time signal processing of multi-element radio telescopes. In this system, a multi-element radio telescope is viewed as an application of a multi-sensor, data fusion problem which can be decomposed into a general set of computing and network components for which a practical and scalable architecture is enabled by current technology. The need for such a system arose in the context of an ongoing program for reconfiguring the Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT) as a programmable 264-element array, which will enable several new observing capabilities for large scale surveys on this mature telescope. For this application, it is necessary to manage, route and combine large volumes of data whose real-time collation requires large I/O bandwidths to be sustained. Since these are general requirements of many multi-sensor fusion applications, we first describe the basic architecture of the NSPS in terms of a Fusion Tree before elaborating on its application for the ORT. The paper addresses issues relating to high speed distributed data acquisition, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based peer-to-peer networks supporting significant on-the fly processing while routing, and providing a last mile interface to a typical commodity network like Gigabit Ethernet. The system is fundamentally a pair of two co-operative networks, among which one is part of a commodity high performance computer cluster and the other is based on Commercial-Off The-Shelf (COTS) technology with support from software/firmware components in the public domain.     

GEO卫星定轨可视化软件设计

介绍了基于Windows系统开发的GEO卫星定轨可视化软件,该软件是采用Microsoft Visual Studio 2005软件平台,利用Visual Basic.NET编程技术开发设计的,具有预处理观测数据资料、解算GEO卫星精密轨道、分析和图形化轨道解算结果等功能。该软件界面友好、可操作性强、方便省时,有效地提高了GEO卫星定轨工作效率。     

Normalized and asynchronous mirror alignment for Cherenkov telescopes

Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) need imaging optics with large apertures and high image intensities to map the faint Cherenkov light emitted from cosmic ray air showers onto their image sensors. Segmented reflectors fulfill these needs, and as they are composed from mass production mirror facets they are inexpensive and lightweight. However, as the overall image is a superposition of the individual facet images, alignment is a challenge. Here we present a computer vision based star tracking alignment method, which also works for limited or changing star light visibility. Our method normalizes the mirror facet reflection intensities to become independent of the reference star’s intensity or the cloud coverage. Using two CCD cameras, our method records the mirror facet orientations asynchronously of the telescope drive system, and thus makes the method easy to integrate into existing telescopes. It can be combined with remote facet actuation, but does not require one to work. Furthermore, it can reconstruct all individual mirror facet point spread functions without moving any mirror. We present alignment results on the 4 m First Geiger-mode Avalanche Cherenkov Telescope (FACT).     

Astroinformation resource of the Ukrainian virtual observatory: Joint observational data archive, scientific tasks, and software

This paper reviews the most important components of the national project of the Ukrainian Virtual Observatory (UkrVO). Among them, there is the establishment of a Joint Digital Archive (JDA) of observational data, which has been obtained at Ukrainian observatories since the 1890s, including an astronegative JDA (more than 200 thousand plates). Since this task requires VO-oriented software, such issues as content verification software, integrity and administration of the JDA, compliance of image formats with the IVOA standards, and photometric and astrometric calibration of images are considered as the most important directions of software development, which carried out by members of the UkrVO. The scientific projects using local data archives of the UkrVO are discussed, namely: an analysis of a long observational series of active galactic nuclei, the study of solar flares and solar active regions based on spectral observational archives, research and discovery of variable stars, and the study of stellar fields in the vicinity of gamma-ray bursts. Particular attention is devoted to the CoLiTec Program that permits us to increase a number of observed solar system bodies and allows us to discover new bodies; for example, the C/2010 (Elenin) and P/2011 N01 comets were discovered using this program at the ISON-NM Observatory. The paper notes the creation of the UkrVO JDA prototype that provides access to the databases of the Main Astronomical Observatory, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (MAO NAS of Ukraine); Nikolaev Astronomical Observatory (NAO); and Lvov Astronomical Observatory.     

Future technologies for optical and infrared telescopes and instruments

The theme of this conference is the evolution of telescopes over the last 400 years. I present my view on what the major leaps of technology have been, and attempt to predict what new technologies could come along in the next 50 years to change the way we do astronomy and help us make new discoveries. Are we approaching a peak of innovation and discovery, and will this be followed by a slow decline? Or are there prospects for even further technology leaps and consequent new discoveries? Will global resource and financial crises bring an end to our great ambitions, or will we continue with bigger telescopes and more ambitious space observatories?