The system software development for Prime Focus Spectrogrsph on Subaru Telescope
Atsushi Shimonoa, Naoyuki Tamuraa, Hajime Sugaia, Hiroshi Karojia
a Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, The University of Tokyo, Japan
ABSTRACT:
The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is a wide eld multi- ber spectrograph using the prime focus of the Subaru telescope, which is capable of observing up to 2400 astronomical objects simultaneously.
The instrument control software will manage the observation procedure communicateing with subsystems such as the ber positioner “COBRA”, the metrology camera system, and the spectrograph and camera systems. Before an exposure starts, the instrument control system needs to access to a database where target lists provided by observers are stored in advance, and accurately position bers onto stronomical targets as requested therein. This ber positioning will be carried out interacting with the metrology system which measures the ber positions. In parallel, the control system can issue a command to point the telescope to the target position and to rotate the instrument rotator. Finally the telescope pointing and the rotator angle will be checked by imaging bright stars and checking their positions on the auto-guide and acquisition cameras. After the exposure nishes, the data are collected from the detector systems and are nalized as FITS les to archive with necessary information.
The observation preparation software is required, given target lists and a sequence of observation, to find optimal fiber allocations with maximizing the number of guide stars. To carry out these operations eciently, the control system will be integrated seamlessly with a database system which will store information necessary for observation execution such as ber con gurations.
In this article, the conceptual system design of the observation preparation software and the instrument control software will be presented.
Shimono et al., “The system software development for Prime Focus Spectrogrsph on Subaru Telescope”, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy II, Nicole M. Radziwill, Gianluca Chiozzi, Editors, Proc. SPIE 8451 (2012).
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https://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.926139
