Altair, ALTitude-conjugated Adaptive optics for InfraRed at Gemini North, was commissioned last October and is one of Canada’s major contributions to the Gemini Project, a seven-nation consortium that built identical 8m telescopes in Hawaii (Gemini North) and Chile (Gemini South). Altair coordinates and transfers data and status to both local and external subsystems at very high speeds. External Gemini subsystems include the Telescope Control System (TCS), Acquisition and Guiding (A&G), Observatory Control System (OCS), Gemini Interlock System (GIS), Time Server, Data Handling System (DHS), and Status and Alarm Database. This paper focuses on a few select sequences such as closing the control loop and delivering a corrected image, collecting statistics, and display data to highlight the complexity of the interactions within Altair.

Date Published: 15 September 2004
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 5496, Advanced Software, Control, and Communication Systems for Astronomy, (15 September 2004); doi: 10.1117/12.552276

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5496:
Advanced Software, Control, and Communication Systems for Astronomy
Hilton Lewis; Gianni Raffi, Editor(s)