TSU 2-m AUTOMATIC SPECTROSCOPIC TELESCOPE PROJECT


                          Monthly Report for February, 2000


     This monthly report for the TSU 2-m AST project covers the calendar month of 
February, 2000.  The first part of the report (I) discusses what we did with the 
expected highlights identified in last month's report; the second section (II--VIII) 
covers the status of various tasks in the schedule; and a third part (IX) gives  
expected highlights for March.  During February, 2000, we continued to have one part-
time employee (Mike Williamson) working at TSU on the telescope program, in computer 
programming and electronic instrumentation, in addition to M. Krebs and M. Wells, 
who provide machining work at their private shops.  Undergraduate student Kenneth 
McDavis continued doing a project related to the control system.


                          I. HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE PAST MONTH

     During February, 2000, we said we expected to do the following things [with steps 
taken then in brackets]: (1) to run MSFC's test of the lateral mirror support system (Task 
119), [This is further delayed to give MSFC time to get optical parts and instruments to 
run the test.  We hope it happens soon.]  (2) to run further slippage tests on the altitude 
and azimuth drive tractors, [These are now finished.  We ran two types of slippage tests, 
one in which the telescope drives (slews) off a certain distance then comes back to its 
original position, and one in which we drive it with a small sinusoidal velocity and watch 
it reverse direction.  The former showed a slight amount of slippage in long slews (of the 
order of 20 arcsec in some cases) but none to within the errors of measurement for shorter 
or slower displacements.  The sinusoidal test showed no hysteresis in the drive.] (3) to 
finish adjusting and pinning the top end (Task 106), [We finished this task by pinning two 
of the feet, by reaming the attachment holes for all four feet, and by making a jig for 
aligning the axis of the tube to within an arcmin of perpendicular to the tilt axis when 
we set the telescope up in Arizona.]  (4) to finish testing the basic motions in azimuth 
and Zenith distance (Task 168, extended).  [We have been running the telescope at least 
three times a week throughout February to look for mechanical startup problems related to 
function of the oil bearings and drives.]  (5) to decide what computers to use for 
telescope control and control of the CCD in the spectrograph and start procuring them 
(Tasks 147 and 174),[We contacted Andre Hedrick for advice about the computer for the 
telescope on 7 Feb.  As of the end of February, he is still working on the problem.  For 
Task 174, the computer for the spectrograph, we have decided to use a Sun Ultra 5, on the 
advice of Bob Leach, and Leach is buying it for us through an extension of our contract 
with him.] (6) to continue integrating and testing the Panasonic guide camera in the 
acquisition/guiding head, and to make enough observations of stars with the camera to assess 
a limiting magnitude for acquisition and guiding (part of Task 175) [Williamson obtained 
images of a starfield with a range of exposures (1/30 sec to 5 min) with the guide camera.
Geoff Hall will analyze them for us in March with IRAF to determine the limiting magnitude 
and assess the noise expected.] (7) to conduct mechanical tests of the secondary-mirror cell 
(Task 239) [We finished anodizing the remaining parts of the cell during the week of 14 Feb, 
ihave been slowly reassembling the cell since, but must defer testing it until we get 
some further modifications made to the spider holding up the mirror.]  (8) to decide how 
to proceed with procurement of the spectrograph camera. [We sent off the report from 
Harland Epps to Peter Maymon for checking.  He is getting one of his engineers to vet 
the design, and we expect to hear from him in March.  Tentatively, we have decided to 
build the 500-mm camera discussed in last month's report and are commissioning Harland 
Epps to draw up bidding documents for procuring the glass for the lenses.]




                                 II. ADMINISTRATION

     During February Eaton made a fact-finding trip to Arizona (Task 34).  He visited 
Fairborn Observatory on 11 Feb to confer with Lou Boyd about the readiness of the enclosures
to receive the 2m telescope.  The enclosure is ready to receive the telescope and to conduct 
initial tests on the telescope.  In particular, the floor is painted and cured.  Eaton also 
visited Sierrita Mining, the contractor Fairborn will use to put the telescope in place, to 
verify that their equipment is adequate for handling and installing the telescope.  Eaton 
and Boyd agreed on the final wiring for the enclosure and for control of the building's 
motions.  Eaton also visited the SOAR project and discussed control systems with Gerald 
Cecil, the Spacewatch project to check on its status, with a consulting engineer that we 
might hire to solve mechanical problems if needed, and with Don Epand to discuss some 
questions about the control system.

     Also, during this time, we wrote a renewal proposal for the CASS center.


                           III. FINISH ENCLOSURES

Task 51: Build building controls: Boyd and Eaton agreed that the air motor they had intended 
to use to move the top half of the building on its tracks will not produce enough torque at 
low speed and decided to replace it with a DC motor with AC controller, which Boyd will 
acquire.  The air motor would have required two auxillary tanks, which we did not yet have, 
and it would have performed poorly when the roof was stalled, such as in high wind.  The 
existing compressor/tank will now be adequate for running the pneumatic controls for the 
enclosure's front door.

Task 60: Wiring in telescope enclosure: Boyd and Eaton decided what circuits are needed and 
how to wire them.

Task 63: Modify Building for spectrograph and controls: We finished a preliminary design of 
the insulation of this building and placement of the spectrograph in it.



                            IV. MECHANICAL INTEGRATION

Tasks 75&95: Assembly of telescope:  This task is now complete.  We ran acceptance tests 
I.A.1 on 8 Feb and 15-29 February.



                            V. CCD DETECTOR AND ITS CONTROLLER

     Our contract with San Diego State is proceeding apace with delivery of the CCD system 
expected in April.  We will buy the Sun computer for controlling this system through SDSU.


                                 VI. CONTROL SYSTEM

     Williamson has been integrating the motion-control algorithm into the program that 
calculates position on the sky.  These programs now will run the two axes of the simulator.
We expect them to be ready to run the telescope once it is relocated to Arizona.  In late 
February, Williamson began thinking about integrating the communications between computers 
(through an internet socket) into these programs.  At present, this code exists as separate 
programs that run the stepper motors over an internet connection and pipes.  He is 
developing the telescope-control program on a single computer, sending commands to the 
telescope-control daemon from a front program through named pipes (cf. ast-13-a02).

     Boyd and Epand have made progress on running the Panasonic guide camera in the other 
telescopes they are building for us.  Boyd had written a program to control it under linux 
almost exactly the same as the one Williamson wrote independently here.  Epand is writing 
a somewhat slicker program that should be directly applicable to the 2-m telescope.
 
     During his visit to Arizona, Eaton discussed control systems with Gerald Cecil of the 
SOAR project.  The purpose of this talk was to determine how SOAR is using LabView, a 
program the hectoring Dr. Gull is so enthusiastic about.  These talks confirmed Eaton's 
understanding that LabView is like an operating system running on top of the computer's 
normal operating system.  It has the advantage of making it possible to set up 
communications between processes and different computers relatively easily.  However, it 
requires that many of the application programs for telescope control be written graphically,
which is foreign to Fairborn Observatory.  SOAR has an expert on writing these graphical 
programs that are its idiom, while we have experts in writing C programs under linux.  
Also, SOAR has black-box programs to do the motion control (the programs Eaton, Hedrick, 
and Williamson have been writing for the last several months) that LabView can communicate 
with.  Commersial software, such as LabView, would thus not have relieved us of the task 
of writing this kind of very device-dependent software.  One interesting side line of this 
discussion is that National Instruments has started  writing linux drivers for its devices, 
a potential benefit independent of LabView.
 
     Student McDavis continues working on his project to study the availability of guide 
stars in random fields around the sky, although he has been slowed by a senior project he 
is doing in the engineering school.


                               VII. SPECTROGRAPH CAMERA

Tasks 187-191: We have finished the preliminary design of the spectrograph, reviewed it 
internally, and sent it off to Peter Maymon for his review.

Task 210: Design mounts for optical elements:  We have preliminary designs for mounts for 
the echelle grating, cross-dispersion grating, and the two reimaging mirrors based on 
modifications of designs we got from R. Tull at Texas.


                               VIII. CALIBRATION SYSTEM

Tasks 255-257: Assembly/modification of the guiding head:  We took the guiding head apart,
had the aluminum parts anodized, and reassembled the guiding head.  During the time it was 
disassembled, we cut holes in the base for various cables and added mounts for the stepper-
motor control boards.  We have reassembled it in late February.  The guiding head is now as 
finished as it will be before we integrate it with the fiber feeds and calibration bench.

Tasks 263:  Acquire fibers.  We received the three 12-meter fiber patch cords from Thor 
Labs that will let us construct prototype data fibers for the instrument.

Tasks 267-269:  Calibration bench:  We have received most of the parts for building the 
calibration system and started assembling them.  We have a design for all of this device 
except for the limit switches and hard stops for a flip mirror.  We expect to receive the 
remaining parts for this assembly during March.  Parts still missing at this time are the 
power supplies for the light sources, the hollow-cathode lamp for wavelength calibration, 
and a couple of mechanical parts for the bench.  During February we constructed the flip 
mirror for switching between the two light sources.  


                             IX. HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE NEXT MONTH

During March, 2000, we expect (1) to finish all the mechanical acceptance tests for the 
telescope, (2) to begin making modifications of the oil bearings,  (3) to acquire the actual 
computers to run the telescope (Task 174),  (4) to arrange to take delivery of the CCD dewar 
and controller in late March or early April (Tasks 145-150),  (5) to finish the calibration 
bench and start integrating it with the guiding head, and (6) to begin procuring the 
spectrograph camera.