Research Of Automatic Telescope Control System For MARST

Astronomy is of great importance to the development of science, it increases people’s understanding of the universe, and provides the data basis for the research of physics. In Antarctic, the thin air, less turbulence, less human activities, are the advantage terrestrial astronomical observations. Since twenty-first Century, the Antarctic, as the earth’s most outstanding Astronomical Observatory, has been widely concerned by the world’s astronomers. Subsequently, China has built observatory in Antarctic, and participate in international cooperation in the Antarctic astronomy observation. This is the opportunity to improve China’s position in the field of astronomy, to make up for the lack of astronomical observation.The climate in Antarctic is so bad that it is impossible for people to stay to control the telescope for long-term observation. Satellite channel bandwidth is very narrow, it is difficult to achieve full remote control, these are the problems needed to solve the polar telescope. For the building of Observertory in Antarctic, scientists have proposed a concept of autonomous observations. Without the intervening of people, the telescope will be able to observe autonomously, in accordance with the designed algorithms,plans and various changes (e.g., weather monitoring, unexpected events, etc.). Multi-channel AntaRctic Solar Telescope is the first Antarctic solar telescope for China. It will be built to study the effect of solar activity on the earth’s climate.Based on the requirement analysis of MARST, this paper presents the basic design requirements in accordance with the Antarctic autonomous observation conditions.After researching the control system of the telescope at home and abroad, the control system for BOOTES called RTS2 is transformed to achieve the design of the observation control system. According to the Antarctic observation conditions and the observation mission of sun, the design of the control process is completed with the RTS2 framework. The IOC in EPICS is used to replace the RTS2 device control modules, so the device control modules are designed using EPICS.The research works are as follows:(1) In this paper, a research is done for the development and basic concept of autonomous observation, and then we establish use case analysis model according to the design requirements of the telescope, analysis of the basic needs for the telescope control and the autonomous observation. For the reason of the short development cycle and the high stability requirements, we use the mature framework RTS2 to complete the design of the observation and control system, and use the EPICS to complete the design of equipment control module.(2) Because of the advantages, such as the good real-time, we use the EPICS to replace the original device control module in RTS2, and completed the transformation for the interface between RTS2 and EPICS.The device control modules are designed by using EPICS’s IOC. The command is sent to device by calling the command PV, and the results gotten from the device are shown in the value PV and status PV.(3) Observatory Control layers are transformed: The class for command is created with the factory methods to realize the Object Oriented process control.According to the requirement of the observation for sun, we define the templates for the processes of observation, plans are explained to command sequence through these templates. The requirement of autonomous observation is realized by the design of the judgment of condition, such as the judgment of weather, time for observing flat, calibration for tracking.(4) Under the framework of RTS2, the Log System is designed. Each component send the log to HTTPD through LogStream, and HTTPD save the log into database.In general, the design of RTS2 and EPICS based autonomous observation control system meets the requirements of the Antarctic autonomous observation. The main innovations of this thesis are:(1) With the advantages of RTS2 for autonomous observation and the advantages of EPICS in device control, the design of RTS2 and EPICS based autonomous observation control system is brought out according to requirements of the Antarctic autonomous observation. This design is first used for solar observation in Antarctic.(2) MARST is the first solar telescope in Antarctica. According to the mission for the solar observation in Antarctica, as well as the scientific objectives of MARST, the design of the observation plan is proposed to achieve process control.(3) Changes are designed in some components of RTS2, so that autonomous observation is realized in the field of solar observation. Especially for executor, the solar observation mode and condition monitoring are redesigned.