Abstract

A Reference Implementation of a Generic Automatic Pointing System

Tomas Staig (Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria (UTFSM), Chile)

Rodrigo Tobar, Mauricio A. Araya, Carlos Guajardo - Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaiso, Chile
Horst H. von Brand - Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaiso, Chile

The correction of every existent observation error is impossible. Nevertheless, the taken approach for doing this should be the best possible one. Regardless there is a huge number of problems to be solved, if one knows how much they affect the observation at given conditions, then it would be possible to observe as desired by counteracting these deviations. Automatic pointing adjustments helps us to do this by providing mathematical support to model the perturbations, and therefore the deviations.

This work shows a generic open-sourced pointing system developed by the ALMA-UTFSM team, intended to work with the gTCS. This pointing system includes several physical terms, terms with spherical harmonics and user customized terms, allowing to generate pointing models in a generic way. Accurate results have been obtained with tested data. Graphical support is also included in our work, which helps to show the variation between experimental and theoretical values of several variables in relation to different coordinates. Thanks to its open-source characteristic, it could be easily integrated to a TCS, automatizing the pointing calibration process for a given telescope and allowing an interesting unseen functionality of changing the pointing model while observing.

Mode of presentation: poster