A Personal Experience with the New Operating System at The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope
I started observing professionally when I was an undergraduate at Caltech in 1968 or 1969. I was fortunate to be able to observe with some of the graduate students and faculty in the Department of Geological and Planetary Sciences. One of the first telescopes I observed with was the 200-inch Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain in southern California. At that time, it was the largest telescope in the world. Through graduate school and as a postdoctoral research fellow, I had access to telescopes in Massachusetts, California, and Arizona, ranging in size from 24-inch telescopes up to the 100-inch Hooker Telescope on Mt. Wilson in southern California and the Hale Telescope.
All of these telescopes had one thing in common—your instrument had a detector that was one “pixel,” a single detector, not the imaging cameras we use today and have in our smartphones that have several million pixels. The other thing they had in common was that you observed in the dome, looking through an eyepiece. It was not until around 1979 or 1980 that I first observed at a telescope that allowed me to be in a “warm room.” This was on Mauna Kea on the then new 120-inch NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF). How things have changed since then!
I do not have any pictures of me using these telescopes, but I have found pictures of astronomers using some of these telescopes.
Figure 1: Astronomer in the prime focus cage of the 200-inch Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain
Figure 2: Dedication of the 200-inch Hale Telescope. Astronomers could set up their instruments and observe in the support arm of the telescope. I observed inside the arm, but never from the prime focus cage.
Figure 3: Edwin Hubble viewing at the 100-inch Hooker Telescope on Mt. Wilson, north of Pasadena California.
Figure 4: A view of the 100-inch Hooker Telescope. In the lower left, you can see the chair that was used to observe from the Cassegrain focus of the telescope. The platform could be raised up for the observer. The platform was sometimes called the gangplank as it was possible to fall off the front of it when it was well above the ground (long before health and safety rules).
Remotely operated telescopes have been around for about 50 years. One of the astronomers I work with, Mark Trueblood, was a coauthor of a book on the subject, written in 1985. He is the Director of Winer Observatory south of Tucson that hosts several remotely operated telescopes.
After 30 years of operation, it was time for the VATT to upgrade—to become a telescope that can be remotely operated without an observer present on the mountain. Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J. and Fr. Paul Gabor, S.J. reported on the status of the installation of the “Don” robotics package in a recent Newsletter, so I will not repeat that here. Our observing team went to the VATT for three nights in mid-June to learn how to use the new operating and control system. We came after several of the Vatican Observatory Staff who were also there to learn the new system. Of equal or greater importance, these were shakedown runs to see what worked, what did not work, and what improvements needed to be made (placement of icons on the screen, additional icons, etc.). In our case, we found that there was important telescope information that was critical to our program that was not included in what is called the image header that is critical to our program.
There are still upgrades that are needed before the ultimate goal of a fully automated and remotely controlled telescope is achieved. For those of us using the VATT 4K camera, this will not happen until a new, upgraded, replacement camera that will not require someone to fill it up with liquid nitrogen every 12 hours is purchased and installed. Our team member, Mark Trueblood, is Chair of the Science Advisory Committee which is in the process of making recommendations for a new camera that meets the needs of the observers who will be using it. The camera will then be purchased by the Vatican Observatory.
We were also there to test and install software that will help with automated collimation and focusing of the telescope. My other teammate, Robert Crawford, is leading the effort to design and install the software. Here is an image that we took with the telescope using the VATT 4K camera. It is an image of T Coronae Borealis (magnitude 10), one of the images we took to help Robert refine his new program. The other stars in the field are magnitude 15 or fainter.
We have made several suggestions for improvements to the display, etc., several of which have already been implemented. Our first science run will be in September or October, and by then we should be able to use the telescope for our science program, once the missing header information (the position of the telescope when the image was taken, the length of the exposure, etc.) is included.
Another telescope function for our program is to be able to move the telescope at the predicted motion of a target asteroid. During this run, we were able to find an asteroid and track it, with the telescope moving at the predicted rate of motion of the asteroid. Here is a 1-minute exposure of the 19th magnitude Near-Earth-Asteroid 2024 LJ.
For both T Coronae Borealis and the asteroid, the telescope pointed perfectly. Mark would input the coordinates of the object and the telescope went there with an accuracy of about 3-arcseconds! For the asteroid, we put in the motion of the asteroid relative to the background stars (non-sidereal motion) and the telescope tracked perfectly. The small dot in the center of the image above is the asteroid while the stars are “streaked” because of the fast motion of the tracked asteroid. The 16-megapixel camera has a field of view that is only 12 arcminutes wide, less than half the diameter of the Moon.
Father Paul Gabor, S.J., the Vice Director of the Vatican Observatory, and leader of the Tucson VO Research Group, was with us at the telescope to train us on the new hardware and software. He was the person who brought the company, ProjectSoft, to install the hardware and software (they have done this for about 30 other telescopes around the world). Father Paul oversaw the installation and now the training of telescope operators.
Startup and shutdown are almost completely automated, replacing 30-year-old computers and eliminating a lot of what the observer used to go through (opening and closing the dome and telescope mirror, etc., etc.)
Mark Trueblood is our primary telescope operator, but I have helped him with the old routine of going from floor to floor, with his checklist, turning on loud oil pumps, fans, chillers, etc. I do not miss this! Now this is done automatically at the click of a mouse. Also, with the old system, the telescope would sometimes not know where it was pointed by a few degrees, and it would take some time to correct that. With the new system, as I said before, the telescope can point to within a few arcseconds and can never get lost!
Following are some pictures from the VATT: The first one has nothing to do with the telescope but was something that you do not usually see!
I took six of the above images except the last two. The last two, probably taken by Fr. Paul, were sent to me by Bob Trembly and show the old vs. the new. The one on the left shows the old telescope control system that controlled the operation of the telescope and rotated the dome, i.e., the interface between the operator and the telescope. On the right, outlined in pink, is another image of the new main control panel with the portion that does the same operations as did the computers on the left.
What a difference 30 years makes!
