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1. Table 2 Filters characteristics 22 Figure 5 shows the spectral response and the efficiency of the wide band filters which are presently available Besides the standard filters for J H and K bands NICS offers the 1 um filter centered at 1 030 um in correspondence with a fair atmospheric window the Jn filter as defined by the Gemini project the K filter which cuts the K band portion where the thermal emission dominates the background flux There is also a band pass filter labeled SW for general purpose observations and pointing and a high pass filter labeled LW which along with the spectral response of the detector acts as a band pass for longer wavelengths 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 Figure 5 Spectral response and efficiency of NICS wide band filters Wavelength Attenuation mag um grays gray 10 1 03 4 8 9 5 1 25 5 1 10 0 1 65 320 10 5 2 15 5 7 ll Table 3 Attenuators characteristics NICS is also equipped with two attenuators gray filters which can be used in combination with any of the broad and narrow band filters whenever observing bright objects which would otherwise saturate the detector The main characteristics of the gray filters are 23 summarized in Table 3 The background flux beyond 2 15 um is dominated by thermal emission from the mirrors which strongly depends on the ambient temperat
2. Spect extract Image analysis 512 i A Apply OFFSET dAlfa 52 52 dDeltas 24 22 Zj Enter manually X 547 55 Y 512 X 320 504 Y 630 962 ELLIPTICITY 0 182 FLUX 61216 91 FHM 6 98 Slit 1 0 Position X 547 55 Arrow position X 567 25 m E sAOimage Quicklook QuickLook DS9 Figure 20 Example of the Center object on slit procedure 65 5 3 3 Tools for observations One of the most important tools for observation is the Focus procedure see Figure 21 SAOImMmage QuUICKIOOK fen fon ata File Kczz0003 fts Object astrometri Value 221 linear 497 817 223 526 Image x 497 817 y 223 526 Frame 1 Zoom 0 593 Angle 0 000 Mean 221 48 Stdev 10 52 zoom scale color 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 Figure 21 Focus procedure useful to calculate the correction to send to M2 mirror for optimizing the focus of the telescope The focus is performed acquiring an image using a focus pyramid on the light beam The pyramid splits the image in four different beams 11 I2 I3 14 as shown in the following Deenter The focus procedure calculates the distance of the center C from the center of the array 512 512 where X Yn are the center of every beams In 4 X mead 312 D xX 4 i l 4 Y nea 512 Y 4 j l Denter V X meaa
3. 7 Figure 17 Layout of the main SExtractor procedures Dashed arrows represent optional inputs Usually SExtractor is oriented towards reduction of large scale galaxy survey data but it also can work on moderately crowded star fields Its main features are Support for multi extension FITS Speed typically 1 Mpixel s with a 2GHz processor Ability to work with very large images up to 65k x 65k pixels on 32 bit machines or 2G x 2G pixels on 64 bit machines thanks to buffered image access Robust deblending of overlapping extended objects Real time filtering of images to improve detectability Neural Network based star galaxy classifier Flexible catalog output of desired parameters only Pixel to pixel photometry in dual image mode Handling of weight maps and flag maps Optimum handling of images with variable S N Special mode for photographic scans XML VOTable compliant catalog output 60 The purpose of SExtractor is to find a compromise between refinement in both detection photometry of the objects and computational speed fo SAOImage Quicklook MEIE File JPVZ0017 fts Object N1893_N10 Applications places system A Thu Feb 12 10 19 AM_ Vincenzo Guido Qa Value o SAOImage Quicklook QuickLook DS9 Jed wes Current image JPVZ0017 fts Image x Y Sky Image Frame 1 Zoom 1 000 Angle
4. 4 Command Contains the real operation For example if the package type is CMD contains the effective command if the package is MSG contains the priority level etc The values of the commands has been subdivided as follow e sequence generator commands from 0x0100 to 0x01 ff e integration parameter commands from 0x0200 to 0x02ff acquisition commands from 0x0300 to 0x03 ff e state commands and debug from 0x0400 to 0x04ff The defined command at a time are Name Value Comment LOADWAVE 0x0109 Select a wave form DOUBLE 0x0202 Single or double acquisition QUADRANTS 0x0203 Number of quadrants to use ONDISK 0x0204 Enable disable write on disk STOP 0x0302 Stop the acquisition ABORT 0x0303 Abort the acquisition INTEGRA 0x0304 Start the integration FREERUN 0x0305 Free run SOCKDS9 0x0306 Set the socket name for Ds9 REINIT 0x0310 Reinitialize STATUS 0x0400 Show the variable status READLOG 0x0410 Print a log KILLTERM 0x0445 Close connection socket 72 5 Data length Contains the value of the data length Due to efficiency reasons this value can t exceed 1400 6 Reserved This value is reserved for future expansion 7 Number of package Contains the value of the number package It is used by the ACK package 8 Checksum Controls mask for the package integrity Calculates as the 16 bits sum of value from 1 to 7 of the header The communication protocol includes the poss
5. Atmospheric Wavelength range Absorption difference betwwe 1 2 species m and 2 airmasses O 0 758 0 768 95 87 H O 0 930 0 940 55 55 H O 1 120 1 130 37 50 HO 1 350 1 360 78 95 O 1 254 1 264 86 67 CO 2 060 2 070 56 82 Table 13 List of the visible features in the AMICI JH HK spectra The quoted depths are the observed ones not necessarily the intrinsic ones Figure 46 Figure 47 and Figure 48 show the depth trend respectively of O2 0 8um and 1 25um CO2 2um and H2O 0 9 1 12 and 1 35 um versus the air mass for the star Hip031303 The most relevant result of this study is that the depth of the features increases with the airmass as already emphasized at the beginning of this chapter The last column of Table 13 reports the differences of the absorption percentage at air mass 1 2 and 2 respectively Vt 02 0 75 microns E 02 1 25 microns o to a T i a T 1 feature depth feature depth 5 to R T Pe een eno ee ee o1 be ts aaa a 4 12 14 16 18 2 4 me 16 Te 2 airmass airmass Figure 46 Observed depth of the O features at 0 75 um and 1 25 um versus the air mass for the star Hip031303 104 08 T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T F CO2 2 06 microns 0 75 rF 4 07 F a T L G as L 5 L w Rid k 0 65 F 06 F L fi f l 1 1 1 i 1 f 1 l 1 1 f l 1 f f l 1 1 1 1 2 1 4 16 18 2 airmass Figure
6. 61 5 3 1 Moving an object in the field The Moving an object in the field procedure see Figure 19 is executed as follows The interface verifies that the current observing mode is IMA or IMAPOL and takes an image with the current DIT NDIT combination The user selects an object on the display The interface determines the centroids Xc Yc of the object using SExtractor If SExtractor does not properly work e g error in fitting center values outside the box the interface takes the mouse position as the object position The user selects defines the position to which the object should be moved For example center of field mouse position X Y coordinates entered manually The program computes the distortion corrected distance in pixels AX and AY from the target position and transforms them in a 5 offsets dAR i Scale AXcos 0p AYsin p dDEC i Scale AXsin p AYcos p where 9 is the position angle and Scale is the pixel scale in arcsec pix see Chapter 5 1 3 for details The Scale parameter is stored in the configuration file overall_config nics The interface transmits the offsets to the telescope and waits for telescope settling The interface acquires a new frame displays it and asks if the user wants to repeat the centering procedure If not it exits from the procedure Into the Ds9 are shown the current object position red cross the final object position the user choiseand the distance
7. 0 000 Fie IPVZDOI7 tts Mean 832 32 Stdev 37 73 ject m893_m0 Tools These are the found objects Select Box Ye ELLIPTICITY FWHM Slit 1 0 Position X 547 55 Arrow position X 567 25 5000 15000 O saoimage Quicklook QuickLook Ds9 B Dialog 5000 10000 15000 20000 Figure 18 Stars selection procedure blue circles in the zoomed portion of the image are the objects found by the procedure using SExtractor The star selection procedure works as follow the interface automatically zooms the portion of the image centered on the click of mouse while SExtractor routine analyzes the image finding the objects as shown in Figure 18 The blue circles evidence the objects found by the procedures the dimension of the circles are adaptive It change with the FWHM of the objects to minimize the overlap problems due to objects very close Then the user can select a given object simply clicking into the blue circle corresponding to the target A red cross shows the selected object than the user can decide if changes the object or continues in the analysis on the selected one If the object is not recognize by SExtractor the user can decide to manually select it In this case information like FWHM ellipticity flux etc is not available
8. C N than calculates the distance of each of the four centroid In from the center C 4 l C gt V X X mean I ie Yao n 1 and the mean of I distance normalized at 1 4 ren Os 1 C 4 Dnorm Pcenter 912 n 1 the Dnorm is used to calculate the correction Zcorr to send to the M2 mirror for adjusting the focus Ratio 1 0 0066 2 D 0 0076 4 D 0 0016 6 D_ _ norm Z com mean 45 1 Ratio 28 corr The image analysis procedure see Figure 22 allows users to retrieve important informations on the selected object in image mode When the object is selected SExtractor analyzes the image and the results are shown into a popup window The user can then retrieve informations as the centroid coordinates the ellipticity the flux and the FWHM of the object Moreover a 3D graph automatically pops up to make easier to have a look on the object characteristics For the 3D graph the interface includes a really powerful software Gnuplot Gnuplot is a portable command line driven interactive data and function plotting utility for UNIX IBM OS 2 MS Windows DOS Macintosh VMS Atari and many other 14 http www gnuplot info 67 platforms Gnuplot supports many types of plots in either 2D and 3D It can draw lines points boxes contours vector fields surfaces and various associated texts It also supports various specialized plot types and many different types of output interactive screen ter
9. The telluric absorption in the NIR varies as a function of air mass and of the time Ideally in spectral regions of strong telluric absorption a standard star and a science target should be observed through identical atmospheric paths at the same time allowing the atmospheric absorption to be canceled out In this ideal case a reference star would be within a few arcseconds of a science target and placing the spectrograph slit across both objects in a position suitable for beam switching would give the highest observing efficiency and accuracy Kenworthy Matthew A 2004 86 Transmittance percent 5 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 Wavelength microns CO Os Absorbing Molecule Figure 27 Atmospheric absorption of electromagnetic radiation 8 1 Telluric Features Telluric features are atmospheric absorption lines of the Earth s atmosphere When an astronomer observes something from the Earth such as a star the starlight passes through the atmosphere and these telluric absorption features appear superimposed with the stellar spectrum Telluric features in the IR region of the spectrum are mainly the result of absorption by ozone O3 gaseous oxygen O2 and water vapor H20 Other lines include the sodium D lines and Carbon dioxide CO2 Of these lines H2O proves the most problematic varying not only with air mass but with humidity levels within the atmosphere as well Water vapor lines are also abundant within the IR regio
10. and Sky image Default subtraction is made between the last two images taken but the user can choose different images e Cross talking corrections Allows the correction for the crosstalk The default is ON but for test or maintenance it is possible to switch OFF the correction and see the original image e Graph Shows a plot of a horizontal and a vertical cut of the region of the image centered into the mouse position Zoom mode Allows the user to zoom IN or OUT simply clicking into the image DSS server Digital Sky Survey server Displays an image retrieved from DSS server at the current coordinates of the telescope position angles after a radiation corresponding to the target position angle Image Spectrum analysis Shows the most important informations of the selected object coordinates of the centroid value of the ellipticity Flux FWHM etc Focus Automatically calculates the correction for the M2 mirror to optimize the focus e Distance Calculates the distance in arcsecond between two objects Every tools which needs the object selection like the Image analysis Center object on slit or Move object in field uses SExtractor to automatically recognize the objects present in the field and allowing to choose one of those A layout of the Sextractor procedure is shown in Figure 17 12 http en wikipedia org wiki Combo_box 13 http archive eso org dss dss 59 Se
11. 10 http burtonini com blog computers devilspie 33 The general structure of the observing modes is shown in the following IMA Filter Camera Attenuator IMAPOL Filter SPE Grism Slit Attenuator SPEPOL Grism Slit The keywords parameters are defined in external files which can be edited by the super user IMA_1 menu nics defines the names of the Filter IMA_2_menu nics defines the names of the Camera IMA_3_menu nics defines the names of the Attenuator IMAPOL_1 menu nics defines the names of the Filter SPE_1_menu nics defines the names of the Grism SPE_2_menu nics defines the names of the Slit SPE_3 menu nics defines the names of the Attenuator SPEPOL_1 _menu nics defines the names of the Grism SPEPOL 2 menu nics defines the names of the Slit The correspondence between observing mode setup and positions of the 7 axis motors is defined within the text file obsmodes_tab nics which can be edited by the super user for maintenance purposes This file contains comments records starting with and one record per observing setup as in the following examples Obsmode setup Position of motors 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 IMA H LF G5 LF LFI in H gray5 LF open SPE Amici 0 75 GO LFS LF in open Amici 0 75 open SPE Dark 1 00 GO LFS any any any close any any The first setup corresponds to imaging with H filt
12. BQ4 POLTENI POLTEN2 DUMMYR NRESETS SAMPLING DINTEGR HAL_LAMP AR_LAMP XE_LAMP DIFFUS END 25 n IMA K K i LF 0 25 GO LF 57950 LF1 3000 in 32800 K 14108 open 4800 LF 72780 open 300 30 00115 30 00115 2 2 grb080229_mos 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 2 0 0 0 0 0 Observation Mode Filter name Filter name Objective arcsec per pixel Attenuator Camera Wheel Array Focus Lyot Slide Filter Wheel Grism Wheel Aperture Wheel Aperture Sector Paddle Integration time on detector 30 0 2 Same as TIME INT Number of frames added together Same as COADDS Name of mosaic file amp position in it Bias quadrant 1 Bias quadrant 2 Bias quadrant 3 Bias quadrant 4 Polarimeter tension 1 Polarimeter tension 2 Dummy read 1 set 0 not number of resets before integration 1 single integration 2 standard 1 dummy integration before real 0 not HAL lamp 1 on 0 off Ar lamp 1 on 0 off Xe lamp 1 on 0 off Diffusor 1 on 0 off 109 APPENDIX B motor_config nics file Files containing configuration information for the 7 motors of NICS Motor active max err steps round software limiting positions gt 0 yes a lt 0 for slides 1e10 none lt 0 no 1 1 2 100000 le10 1e10 2 1 2 0 100 8000 3 0 3 0 100 32950 4 1 2 60000 le10 1e10 5 1 2 6
13. different air masses The data were acquired using the JH R 1000 HK R 1000 grisms and the AMICI prism at very low resolution R 100 with a 0 5 slit in LF mode 0 25 arcsec pixel For each star and each instrumental setup a standard ABBA mosaic has been used i e a 4 points mosaic with a separation of 20 between the points as shown in Figure 28 Different 90 exposure times have been adopted for different instrumental configurations as shown in Table 9 Filter Dit sec Ndit Amici 7 I JH 40 1 HK 60 1 Table 9 Observational exposure times Table 10 shows for each stars and each instrumental setup the air mass values for the observations taken during the photometric night 22 03 2009 Hip031303 JH 1 21 1 7 2 07 HK 1 13 1 35 1 62 AMICI 1 2 1 32 2 12 Hip031567 JH 1 16 1 42 1 92 HK 1 1 1 41 1 83 AMICI 1 1 1 16 1 57 Table 10 Air mass values for each telluric standard star at the different instrumental setups Data reduction has been performed by using IRAF tasks with the support of SAOImage Ds9 for the visualization The spectra obtained by using the ABBA mosaic have been subtracted A B B A and combined using a IRAF macro sp_comb Maiolino private communications to obtain a mean of all the spectra and to subtract the sky contribution The spectra have been extracted using the APALL task and thus calibrated in wavelengths
14. field stops and slits are mounted on a wheel Immediately after the focal plane a further removable field stop makes polarimetric measurements possible The collimator is an achromatic doublet lens which images the entrance pupil of the TNG and provides a parallel beam at the pupil plane where Lyot stops can be placed Immediately after the pupil plane two adjacent wheels carry filters and grisms Two interchangeable optical systems relay the image of the focal plane on the detector with the desired magnification A third optical system images the entrance pupil on the detector for the purpose of an accurate alignment of the telescope with the instrument pupil and is not normally used in routine observations A short discussion can be found in Gennari et al 1995 The spectroscopic mode makes use of the wide field camera by inserting one of the grisms located on the second filter wheel into the parallel beam after the pupil The rejection of stray and thermal light is left to the TNG baffles in J H and K bands At longer wavelengths where the thermal radiation could prevail it is possible to insert a cold stop precisely positioned at the pupil image The sensitive element of NICS has a 18 5 um pixel pitch and is sensitive to radiation at wavelengths between 0 90 um and 2 5 um Its 21 performance in term of dark current efficiency and read noise is comparable or better than the 256 x 256 NICMOS 3 e g Lisi et al 1996
15. pp 626919 The GIANO TNG spectrometer Rossetti E Guido V Oliva E 2008 Proc SPIE 7019 pp 70191R 70191R 8 The software upgrade of NICS Rossetti E Oliva E Origlia L 2008 Proc SPIE 7019 pp 70191S 70191S 9 The Giano Control System Vitali F Cianci E Lorenzetti D et al 2000 Proc SPIE Vol 4008 p 1383 1394 Silicongrisms for high resolution spectroscopy in the near infrared Manuals ETS Reference Manual available at www lantronix com pdf ets_ref pdf User s manual Model 330 available a www lakeshore com pdf_files Obsolete 330_Manual pdf OEM microstepping manual available at www compumotor com manuals oem OEM_manuals htm 112
16. 11 character string made of 10 ASCH digits 0 or 1 and a device address 1 8 which is not a software status but the report of the actual hardware status response on the inputs This information is used to verify the limit switches trigger inputs and home switches are working correctly Furthermore the Rq label indicates the status of each motor R stands for ready B for busy e a resetting motors utility For every motor it is possible to launch a reset procedure which is rather simple for the rotating wheels and more complicated for the translational movements especially for 7 The resetting is mandatory in case of switching ON of the controller and when a failure of the system in suspected Test on all NICS motors give a maximum value of resetting time starting from the worst conditions from about 20 sec motors 4 and 5 to abouts 2 5 min motor 7 a recovery system only for motor 7 Due to technical problems motor 7 requires an additional procedure of initialization which must be run at starting and generally in case of problems see Chapter 5 2 3 46 a multi motions procedure More than one motor can be moved at the same time The command GO all is able to perform this action provided that the NEW pos entries have been filled with right values If only one new entry position is entered the command GO all is equivalent to the GO command for that motor The new low leve
17. 47 Observed depth of the CO features at 2 05 um versus the air mass for the star Hip031303 H20 08 1 35 microns a ae T 4 06 T g iH a w 2 0 9 microns 04 02 0 14 ee eee 14 l ii ji a oe lri l f 1 1 2 1 4 1 6 1 8 2 airmass Figure 48 Observed depth of the HO features at 0 9 1 12 and 1 35 um versus the air mass for the star Hip031303 105 Conclusion This Phd thesis was entirely developed at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo TNG Roque de los Muchachos La Palma Canary Islands with the aim of designing developing and implementing a new Graphical User Interface GUI for the Near Infrared Camera Spectrometer NICS installed on the Nasmyth A of the telescope The idea of a new GUI for NICS has risen for optimizing the astronomers work through a set of powerful tools not present in the existing GUI such as the possibility to move automatically an object on the slit or do a very preliminary images analysis and spectra extraction The new GUI also provides a wide and versatile image display an automatic procedure to find out the astronomical objects and a facility for the automatic image crosstalk correction Moreover some other improvements regarding the technical aspect of the GUI has been implemented such as the time for the startup has been optimized in comparison to the existing version the serial motors connection have been replaced by an ethernet connection making easier the relocation of the
18. 7 is explicitly excluded 5 2 4 Mechanical problems Each stepper motor operates at room temperature and atmospheric pressure and is connected through a quite complex mechanical system to the moving axis which lies in vacuum and at cryogenic temperatures No encoder exists on the moving axis and the only information available relative to the movement is the number of steps issued by the controller to the motor Noticeably these steps are counted even when the motor is mechanically blocked In case a mechanical problem occurs the axis may not respond correctly to the motor impulse or may even not move at all In such a case the system looses steps and the step encoders recorded by the controller do not any longer correspond to the position of the axis Even when the mechanics works properly it may occur that the system looses a few steps every once in while 49 The only way to recover the correct step encoders value is to reset the axis During this operation it is also possible to quantify the number of steps lost In case mechanicals problems prevent the movement of a given motor this can be excluded by all setup procedures In such a case the interface ignores any setup movement or telemetric command related to the motor and display excluded in the engineering status panel The parameter defining if a motor is active or excluded is contained in the configuration file motors_config nics which can be edited by the sup
19. In particular for the spectra AMICI a lookup table has been used for the wavelength calibration because the AMICI spectra have a too much low resolution for using calibration lamps The resulting spectra have been normalized dividing every counts by the mean 8 3 1 Relative flux versus air mass In the following I show some results obtained comparing the spectra observed at different air masses Figure 29 and Figure 30 show two AMICI spectra for the standard stars Hip031303 and Hip031567 respectively taken at different air masses after a normalization at the same flux value corresponding to a mean of the fluxes in a wavelengths range values around 1 1 m As expected systematic deeper absorption features at higher air masses are observed together with a decrease of the relative flux The corresponding observational conditions are shown in Table 11 and 12 20 http irafnoao edu 91 Graph Air mass Seeing Yellow 1 57 1 5 Black 2 12 1 5 Table 11 Data parameters for the standard Hip03 1303 Graph Air mass Seeing Red 1 1 1 0 Cyan 1 57 1 0 Table 12 Data parameters for the standard Hip031567 Relative flux gt D gt p 1 5 oo airmass 1 32 black airmass 2 12 wavelength p 2 5 Figure 29 Comparison of two AMICI spectra taken at different air masses for the star Hip031303 red airmass 1 1 cyan airmass 1 57 0 8 E
20. K YELLOW Temperature 3 gt 100 K RED Table 8 Ranges of internal pressures and temperatures of NICS 84 The web link allows the responsible to connect automatically to the internal TNG web page dedicate to NICS In that way the responsible can check the dewar graphs and retrieve most accurate informations on the problem For increasing the safety in case of warning status detections the software sends in addiction to the warning email an SMS Short Message Service to the responsible trough an SMS gateway SMS see Appendix C is a communication service which is a text message up to 160 characters long no matter what method is used Typically used on mobile telephone handsets utilizing the GSM it is now available on a wide range of networks including 3G and can be used with VOIP systems and from your desktop computer A SMS gateway provider facilitates the SMS traffic between subscribers acting as the server or network hub for the individual messages much like a service provider for Internet or websites The SMS Gateway provides the path so that the SMS messages can be sent directly to and from recipients avoiding delays and message loss through optimized routing and is frequently used for communications Due to the total length limitation in number of characters no more than 160 and the row length limitation approximatively 40 characters the SMS must be much more compact than emails but its must inclu
21. To guarantee that the object is properly centered in the slit the interface can take advantage of a small arrow inserted at the top center of the mask for LF imaging This arrow is clearly visible as a shadow in all LF frames taken with broad band filters and typical integration times 63 This slit centering procedure see Figure 20 is executed as follows 1 The interface verifies that the current observing mode is IMA with objective LF and takes an image with the current DIT NDIT combination The image is displayed on the screen and ready for the typical image processing options e g subtract another image divide by flat The interface selects a small area of the frame around the arrow position from x 500 590 and y 990 1024 verifies if the arrow is visible and determines Xa its central position along the x axis In case the arrow in not visible the program exits with an error message which includes some wise suggestions The user selects the slit among the list in the configuration file the default is the previous slit used and the y position at which the object must be positioned default is y 560 The X target position X is derived from the fitted arrow central position X as follows Xt Xa SLIT DX where SLIT DX depends on the selected slit and is tabulated in the configuration file overall_config nics The user selects the object with the mouse on the image display and defines if a centering a
22. between the two positions in arcsecond A pop up informs the user about the values of the offset and permits the user to decide if it is necessary move again the telescope or not Note that the LF images are affected by pin cushion distortion which amounts to 1 and 3 at the array edges and corners respectively Any measurement of pixel coordinates must then be corrected for this effect using the following algorithm Let x and y be the measured pixel coordinates x y 1 1024 Let R s be the normalized distance from the frame center Ros V x 512 y 512 512 62 The distortion corrected pixel coordinates X Y are given by X x 1 0 0055 Robs 0 0072 Robs 0 0021 Robs Y y 1 0 0055 Robs 0 0072 Robs 0 0021 Robs The SF images are not affected by distortion i e X x and Y y a SAGImage QmickIook File JPVZ0017 fts Object N1893_N10 Value 704 FK5 00 21 26 411 33 29 39 97 Image x 178 977 y 861 206 Frame 1 Zoom 0 593 Angle 0 000 Mean 710 32 Stdev 33 58 zoom scale color J F 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 Figure 19 Move procedure as an example of the moving object in the field procedure 5 3 2 Centering the object in the slit Due to mechanical inflections the image of the slit on the array may move by a few pixels depending on the angle of the derotator where NICS is mounted
23. control room to the downstairs floor as planned by the director of the TNG Special care was taken to simplify the mosaic procedure for examples the return to the origin position of the telescope 0 0 when the exposure ends or is aborted Within the project of progressively automatizing the telescope planned for the next years the new interface will allows easy communications with a new system of observing blocks manager for the execution of sequences of exposures in a fully automatic way that should become available in near feature 106 In order to test the overall correct functioning of the new GUI for NICS and providing some information on the atmospheric extinction at the TNG site two telluric standard stars have been spectroscopically observed within some engineering time namely Hip031303 and Hip031567 The used NICS set up is as follows Large Field 0 25 pixel mode 0 5 slit and spectral dispersion through the AMICI prism R 100 and the higher resolution R 1000 JH and HK grisms Such observations provide i a successful testing of the GUI including mosaic procedures the general connection with motors and detectors the FITS creator procedures ii a preliminary study of the atmospheric extinction in the near IR spectral range at the Roque de Los Muchachos The variation of the observed depth of the most important absorbers like water CO and oxygen with varying the air mass has been also investigated as well has their
24. corrected image on the left and a crosstalk corrected image on the right In the GUI this effect is compensated via software using a specific FORTRAN script crt_nics As shown in Figure 16 the Quicklook and pre reduction window is divided into three main blocks Move object in the field e Center object on slit The pre reduction tools The procedure Move object in field and Center object on slit are very useful to automatically put an object into the center of a selected slit or to move an object into a specific position of the array chosen by the astronomer These procedures are described more in details in the paragraphs 5 3 1 and 5 3 2 The Tools procedure see paragraph 5 3 3 for more details contains a large number of useful tools which allow the astronomers to retrieve important informations on the objects and simplify the finding procedure 57 m QuickLook DS9 NER Current image xj Sky Image Spect extract Focus Se Slit Arrow position FWHM Slit Move pannel LJ Center of Field J Mouse Position I Enter manually X Y 512 Figure 16 The Quicklook and pre reduction window 58 In the follow the tools available on the GUI Rotate image This is a tools which allows user to rotate the images and provides a suitable tools for the object seeking Sky subtract Allows the subtraction between the images selected in the combobox Current image
25. detectors to observe light from near infrared to near ultraviolet wavelengths Visible range falls in the middle of this range Infrared astronomy deals with the detection and analysis of infrared radiation this typically refers to wavelength longer than the detection limit of silicon solid state detectors about 1 um wavelength Radio astronomy detects radiation from millimeter to tens of meters wavelength The receivers are similar to those used in radio broadcast transmission but much more sensitive High energy astronomy includes X ray gamma ray and extreme UV astronomy as well as studies of neutrinos and cosmic rays The instruments to study each spectral range are very different in concept kind of arrays and optic systems but in its general structure the software to manage these devices and to do the observation is very similar and can be subdivided into 4 main levels Rossetti 2008 the low level software This level is designed to handle all hardware related functions and detector controls It is physically split in two 12 locations one inside the NICS PC and the other into the embedded processor FASTI located at the focal plane electronics the middle level software This level works like a bridge between the high level software and the low level software managing all commands messages and errors the high level software This level is intended to fulfill all astronomy related tasks and also to act as an inter
26. develop software Libraries contain code and data that provide services to independent programs Some operative systems and libraries may not be compatibles with the oldest softwares For this reason usually the PC dedicated to an instrument is updated with care to the latest software versions to avoid the problems due to the incompatibility risks Year after year the software hardware update necessity becomes more and more important until it becomes essential The best solution is to develop a new GUI based on the newest software and libraries to exploit the new hardware resources 3 2 Tcl Tk language for GUI developing Nowadays there are a lot of different languages for GUI developing some of the most used are Perl Java Python C HTML PHP IDL and Tcl For the new NICS GUI developing I used Tc for the follow reasons All data types can be manipulated as strings including code Everything can be dynamically redefined and overridden Everything is a command including language structures Extremely simple syntactic rules Event driven interface to sockets and files Time based and user defined events are also possible Simple exception handling using exception code returned by all command executions All commands defined by Tcl itself generate informative error messages on incorrect usage e Readily extensible via C C Java and Tel Interpreted language using byte code for improved speed whilst mainta
27. integrating contribution in the J H and K photometric bands Air mass is a critical parameter when estimating the overall attenuation of the IR flux by the atmosphere particularly in the K band by changing air mass from 1 to 2 the overall attenuation factor increases by 30 while is only within 10 in the J and H bands 107 SIMPLE BITPIX NAXIS NAXIS1 NAXIS2 EXTEND TELESCOP INSTRUME BSCALE BZERO BUNIT EXP ID OBS TYPE FILENAME NUMBER DATE OBS DATE TIME EXPSTART ORIGIN J DAY PROGRAM OBJECT OBJCAT RA RAD DEC RAD RA HOURS DEC DEG DEL RA DEL DEC RA DEC LST PARANG EQX OBS EQUINOX AIRMASS AZ EL POSANG ROT POS ROT OFF CRPIXI CRPIX2 CRDELT1 CRDELT2 DETOFF1 DETOFF2 DETSIZ1 DETSIZ2 APPENDIX A fits file examples T 16 2 1024 1024 T TNG NICS 1 0 COUNTS JRZZ0052 science JRZZ0052 fts 52 2008 03 01 2008 03 01 06 31 13 06 29 58 CGG 4526 77167824097 A17TAC 9 GRB080229 GRB080229 3 983067 0 2564538 15 21419 14 69372 10 10 15 2144 14 7018 15 9545 0 2396734 2000 2000 1 404435 0 2655523 0 7923853 3 814697E 06 2 594846 1 099558 O m pum w 0 1024 1024 file does conform to FITS standard number of bits per data pixel number of data axes length of data axis 1 length of data axis 2 FITS dataset may contain e
28. is smaller than the actual y position and y xX gt gt N 2_ The absolute step encoder i e the number of steps since the last reset is larger than 1 10 The program first moves the motor to position N 3000 then sends a reset command and finally moves the motor to the x position 5 2 7 Commands to serial The program communicates with the drivers through a single serial channel and using a relatively simple protocol of string ASCII commands Although the drivers always respond to the command however the answer is sometimes queued and issued only when the motor has terminated the movement see e g the PR command below During this time the controller accepts other commands Consequently the program must be designed to handle delayed answer or alternatively to issue dangerous commands only when the system is ready to answer promptly The maintenance panel must also foresee a terminal like interface where the super user can type the commands to send to the controllers without any filtering by the interface In the following there is a list of the serial commands used to control move the NICS motors Reset motor 1 IGH 2 Reset motor 2 see Chapter 5 2 5 Reset motor 3 see Chapter 5 2 5 Reset motor 4 4GH 2 Reset motor 5 5GH 2 Reset motor 6 6GH 2 Reset motor 7 see Chapter 5 2 5 53 Set step encoder of motor n to zero nPZ Prepare motor n to move to xxx step encoders NDxxx Start movement of
29. lantronix com 73 IS input output command is driven and addressed to a specific IP number The spectrometer is equipped with 5 sensors positioned throughout the cryostat to monitor the temporal and spatial variation of the temperature during the instrument cooling warming processes and during normal operations These are commercial temperature sensors and controllers Lakeshore 330 and Balzers DualGauge which communicate directly with the PC control system using their dedicated serial protocol These serial communications are re routed on the Ethernet by a commercial terminal server Lantronix ETS8P The temperature and pressure monitor program IS reads every few seconds the temperatures of all sensors inside the cryostat and the dewar pressures and sent the values immediately to the TNG database by the ICS Figure 24 Schematic connection between Fasti pc and NICS devices 6 2 1 Troubleshot in communication with the Lantronix device During the motors communication tests at the telescope some different kinds of errors occured The communication between the Compumotor OEM300 and Lantronix was affected by overlap in reply packages and by hexadecimal values incoming Since the first test the appearance of various kind of different and casual errors in communication between the two devices leaded to a very frequent interface crash A specific and depth study acts to solve these problems was started analyzing first of all the softwa
30. of 4 longer than those with the LF In spectroscopy the data taken with low and medium resolution grisms are read out noise limited at all the wavelengths where the sky emission is low The only mode which achieves background limited performances at most wavelengths is low R spectroscopy with the Amici prism However this requires a careful tuning of the value of DIT to obtain a reasonably high signal in the blue without saturating the red part of the spectrum The value given in Zable 7 guarantees good performances in the blue with saturation starting at about 2 4 microns Observing mode Suggested DIT sec Imaging J Js Imic 60 LF 240 SF pol Imaging H K K 25 LF 100 SF pol Ima narrow band 150 LF 600 SF pol Ima AdOpt J Js Imic 600 LF 600 SF Ima AdOpt H K K 240 LF 600 SF Imat AdOpt N B 600 LF 600 SF Spectroscopy Amici 120 x 1 slit width Spectroscopy 600 900 Table 7 Suggested integrations time for observing modes 29 Chapter 5 The NICS interface In its general structure the NICS software system can be subdivided into 4 main levels as already described in Chapter 2 and here summarized the low level software This level is designed to handle all hardware related functions and detector controls It is physically split in two locations one inside the NICS PC and the other into the embedded processor located at the focal plane electronics
31. rack is switched OFF and ON again all the controllers restart with the step encoder counters set to zero Since the useful motor positions never correspond to the zero position of the step encoder the startup procedure for the step encoders can be easily performed as follows if all the active motors have step encoders 0 simply takes the values and displays them on the panel If all the active motors have step encoders 0 the interface opens a window saying motors controllers have been most likely switched off ready to reset all motors and executes the reset operation after the user confirms it If some of the active motors have step encoders O the interface issues warning message s but does not perform any reset After that the interface searches if the current positions of the active motors corresponds to an observing mode This is performed by searching for each motor and in the motor pos nics files the keyword corresponding to the actual position within the positional error defined in motors_config nics If no correspondence is found the keyword any is used The program then checks if the combination of keywords thus produced is present in the obsmodes_tab nics configuration file In case it exists the program takes the strings describing the observing mode from the corresponding _menu nics files and updates the GUI accordingly Otherwise the GUI displays Not Set in the observing mode window 5 2 3
32. rotations performed by the wheel along the same direction while the real position must range between 0 and the maximum motor elongations i e the correspondence to 360 The conversion step encoder to real position is automatically done by the interface NICS GEM motor controller manager vers 22 7 06 NICS Motors Maintenance Panel Manual command to OEM controller Sen for command type syntax range and attributes see Parker Compumotor OEM Series Software Reference Guide BREE EE RAM fey Oey gt A NICS motors movements ALL motors at once log window Open link Close link Test connection EXIT Figure 13 Maintenance window Motors controlling translation movement 2 3 and 7 instead have a limited range of movements from about 0 to a few thousands of steps These values are always positive and for these motors step encoders and real position coincide For these motors the new NICS 45 interface also has a set of software limits which are defined in the configuration file and are used to avoid approaching the limit switches during normal operations The valid real positions for all NICS motors are defined in a hidden configuration file which can be modified only for maintenance purposes This file allows the logical translation between real position at low level and instrumental setup at high level The maintenanc
33. single frames or mosaics acquisitions It allows the observing mode selection and setting acquisitions parameters like DIT NDIT NINT calibration lamps etc Also provides detailed and useful informations on telemetry parameters telescope and NICS status 32 Maintenance window is dedicated to the motors management allowing operations like positioning Stop and Reset of each motor This window also checks all engineering parameters allowing the users to have a complete motors control and monitoring the overall status of them Also it manages potential blocks of the motors allowing the superuser to restore the normal work conditions e Quick look and pre reduction window provides a wide display for the images visualizations and a package of tools acts to setting up the instruments for observations showing the seeing and radial profiles informations To optimize the space on the desktop and to avoid its saturation opening many different windows in the same virtual desktop a light software called Devilspie has been implemented This software allows to automatically redirect applications to a specific virtual desktop At the startup Devilspie looks for scripts ending with ds in a devilspie directory in the home directory The ds files have been opportunely configured to organize the windows in three virtual desktops the workspace 1 is reserved for the Observing window the second one for the Quick look window and the
34. sources are significantly fainter than the background noise IR array detectors are intrinsically unstable their response depends on illumination hence a mere subtraction of a dark frame as for optical CCDs it is not sufficient and can vary on typical timescales of minutes This requires a periodic acquisition of background frames the so called sky frames Sky frames can be acquired by dithering techniques and or by telescope nodding The read out of IR detectors is also different from CCDs Each pixel is read independently so for example there are no blooming effects and during an exposure the array can be read several times multiple non destructive read mode MNDR in order to reduce the readout noise especially useful for spectroscopy 2 Attp www ing iac es Astronomy instruments liris liris_obs_tech html 10 In the recent years many of the 4 8m class ground based telescopes have been equipped with Adaptive Optics AO capabilities to improve the overall image quality An AO system can potentially remove the effects of the atmospheric turbulence and other optical distortions by using a suitable wavefront sensor to monitor them and a deformable mirror to compensate for them 11 Chapter 2 Overall structure for astronomical software All wavelength regions are nowadays studied by specific instruments and telescopes Optical astronomy is the part of astronomy that uses optical components mirrors lenses and solid state
35. the middle level software This level works like a bridge between the high level software and the low level software managing all commands messages and errors the high level software This level is intended to fulfill all astronomy related tasks and also to act as an interface between the low level software and the astronomer Hence it includes several GUIs to provide a full control of all sub systems the scientific software It includes the pre reduction facilities and some useful tools for the observations Figure 10 shows the main architecture of the NICS Control Software 30 Observing Blocks em Science data storage Figure 10 Main architecture blocks for the high level software Each software level deals with different aspects of the instrument functionality and includes several blocks which can be conveniently grouped as follows Rossetti et al 2008 Detector Control Software DCS it manages the array controllers It is directly interfaced to the hardware and is responsible for the initial handling of scientific data in real time Instrument Control Software ICS this block manages the instrument status It provides a list of FITS keywords describing the instrument status IS A permanent connection with ORACLE database allows to retrieve all NICS low level telemetry Observation Software OS this branch coordinates telescope telemetry command variables It controls all the parameters n
36. the molecular absorption features and bands of an AMICI spectrum for the star Hip031303 Figures 35 to 37 show different zoomed regions for the same spectrum the most important molecular atmospheric absorption features and bands are emphasized 0 8 Relative flux D gt P 0 2 wavelength p Figure 34 Absorption features in an AMICI spectrum for the star Hip031303 97 08 0 6 F rang S H s w o4 02 eee 0 i fi 06 08 1 12 wavelength py Figure 35 Absorption features in the 0 6 1 2 um region in an AMICI spectrum for the star Hip03 1303 0 8 Relative flux D A P 0 2 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 wavelength p Figure 36 Absorption features in the 1 2 1 7 um region in an AMICI spectrum for the star Hip031303 98 T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T ia cH Ho i 0 8 E x 06 M 3 5 w 2 F 5 w L 04 F 0 2 F F L co CO o E SS 17 18 1 9 2 2 1 2 2 wavelength p Figure 37 Absorption features in the 1 7 2 2 um region in an AMICI spectrum for the star Hip031303 As shown in Figure 34 one of the most common and important constituents of our atmosphere is the water vapour Its importance is due not only to its determining effects on the weather development within the troposphere but also to the role as an important partner in the photochemical reactions and important agent of the heat exchange and of atmospheric
37. usually divided into 3 spectral regions near mid and far IR The boundaries between the near mid and far IR regions can vary depending on the type of detector technology used for gathering IR light 1 http coolcosmos ipac caltech edu SPECTRAL WAVELENGTH TEMPERATURE WHAT WE SEE REGION RANGE microns RANGE degrees Kelvin Near Infrared 0 7 1 to 5 740 Cooler red stars to Red giants 3 000 5 200 Dust is transparent Mid Infrared 5 to 25 40 92 5 140 Planets comets and to asteroids 740 Dust warmed by starlight Protoplanetary disks Far Infrared 25 40 to 200 350 10 6 18 5 Emission from cold to dust 92 5 140 Central regions of galaxies Very cold molecular clouds Near IR imaging and spectroscopy are much more difficult different than in optical The sky background is dominated by night sky emission lines and especially in the K bands by the temperature of the atmosphere The IR detectors usually get saturated after 10 20 seconds of exposure time in K which leads to a very large number of images with rather short exposure times Although IR instruments are usually cooled down to about 60 70 K in order to suppress heat radiation the telescope and surrounding dome remain at ambient temperature Their heat radiation has to be carefully kept out of the instrument in order to minimize the background noise Background subtraction is a critical step since very often the target
38. 0 6 Y A T ia 0 4 02 0 1 L 1 1 l 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 l 1 1 0 5 1 1 5 2 25 wavelength p Figure 30 Comparison of two AMICI spectra taken at different air masses for the star Hip03 1567 Figure 31 shows two spectra for the star Hip031303 taken at different air masses with the HK on the left and JH grism on the right Thanks to the higher spectral resolution of these grisms compared to the AMICI prism Figure 29 the absorption features of CO2 are somewhat better defined 93 r 1 T r T r T red airmass 1 13 airmass 1 62 green airmass 1 21 black airmass 2 07 0 8 o a Relative flux Relative flux S a 0 2 wavelength p wavelength p Figure 31 Comparison of two HK on the left and JH spectra on the right taken at different air masses for the star Hip031303 It is interesting to check the effects of the atmospheric extinction with varying the air mass in each of the photometric J H K bands In order to do that the AMICI spectra at the different air masses of the telluric standard star Hip031303 have been convolved with the J H K filter transmission profiles Figure 32 shows an example of the results of such computation while Figure 33 compares relatives fluxes of four spectra taken at different airmasses and convolved with the J H K band profiles It was not possible to do the same test for the standard stars Hip031567 due to lack of data 94 A
39. 0000 le10 1e10 6 1 2 200000 lel0 lel0 7 1 4 200000 100 49000 a Maximum positioning error step encoders 110 APPENDIX C Short Message Service SMS and Gateway SMS SMS is a communication service standardized in the GSM mobile communication system using standardized communications protocols allowing the interchange of short text messages between mobile telephone devices SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application on the planet SMS as used on modern handsets was originally defined as part of the GSM series of standards in 1985 as a means of sending messages of up to 160 characters including spaces to and from GSM mobile handsets SMS gateway providers facilitate the SMS traffic between businesses and mobile subscribers being mainly responsible for carrying mission critical messages SMS for enterprises content delivery and entertainment services involving SMS e g TV voting Considering SMS messaging performance and cost as well as the level of messaging services SMS gateway providers can be classified as aggregators or Signaling System 7 SS7 providers The SS7 protocol is used in the public switched telephone system the intelligent network or advanced intelligent network for setting up calls and providing services The aggregator model is based on multiple agreements with mobile carriers to exchange 2 way SMS traffic into and out of the operator s SMS platform also known as local termina
40. A Jodrell Bank Observatory http hea www harvard edu RD ds9 http archive eso org cms tools documentation skycat http heasarc nasa gov docs software ftools fv http dsnra jp nasa gov development rac http www eso org sci facilities lasilla sciops observing bob html http www jb man ac uk research pulsar tech03 OMAN NDNAHA 17 Chapter 4 TNG and NICS The TNG Figure 2 is a new concept telescope located in the Roque de Los Muchachos La Palma Canary Islands To take full advantage of the seeing quality in this site Milian M 1996 the TNG is furnished with an active optical correction system which allows to minimize the errors due to the mechanical components micro bend effects thermal dilatation etc The air flux inside the telescope dome is constantly monitored and regulated to improve the seeing near the incoming optical beam The optical design is a Ritchey Chretien type with two hyperbolic mirrors the principal mirror called M1 is concave with a diameter D 3 6 m and the second one M2 is a convex mirror which provides a focus at F The third mirror is plane M3 and provides two Nasmyth focus named A and B The TNG is provided with an alt azimuth mount For this reason the telescope needs a field derotator for each Nasmyth The TNG is equipped with a mechanic derotator which consists in a flange ring with a diameter D 1 7 m in which are mounted the scientific instruments These flange rings can r
41. Alma Mater Studiorum Universita di Bologna DOTTORATO DI RICERCA ASTRONOMIA Ciclo XXII FIS 05 Development and optimization of graphic user interfaces GUIs for infrared spectrometers at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo Presentata da Vincenzo GUIDO Coordinatore Dottorato Relatore Prof Lauro MOSCARDINI Chiar mo Prof Bruno MARANO Co relatori Dott sa Livia ORIGLIA Dott Emanuel ROSSETTI Esame finale anno 2009 Index Introduction 1 Infrared observations 2 Overall structure for astronomical software 3 Graphic User Interface 3 1 Why anew Nics GUI 3 2 Tcl tk language for GUI developing 4 TNGand NICS 4 1 NICS in imaging mode 4 2 NICS in spectroscopic mode 4 3 NICS detector 4 4 NICS electronics 5 The NICS interface 5 1 Acquisition window 5 1 1 Defining and performing the telescope movements mosaics 5 1 2 Offsetting the telescope 5 1 3 Computing the offset of a mosaic 5 1 4 Structure of the fits files 5 1 5 Mosaic offset in header fits 5 2 Maintenance window 5 2 1 Interface encoder absolute counter and historic log 5 2 2 Interface startup 5 2 3 Recovery of motor 7 when stuck at initialization 5 2 4 Mechanical problems 5 2 5 Resetting the motors 5 2 6 Optimizing wheels movement passing through zero 5 2 7 Commands to serial 5 3 Quicklook and pre reduction facilities 5 3 1 Moving an object in the field 5 3 2 Centering the object in the slit 5 3 3 Tools for observations 6 Protocols and devices comm
42. JSQZ0131 fts EJ Sky Image gt 2 Applications Places System oO SAOImage Quicklook File J35020131 fts ca lt pam Center objin sit ue a wes Move obj Image x x Frame 1 Zoom 0 593 Angle 0 000 Mean 99 76 Stdev 59 50 Image analysis Distance zoom Slit Arrow position FWHM Slit Gnuplot Extracted spectrum 1000 1200 pixels ll 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000_181 724 4086 47 I a SAOlmage Quicklook I QuickLook DS9 I O Dialog O gplt TH q ic io Figure 23 Spectrum extraction procedure allows user to have a first look on the spectrum 69 Chapter 6 Protocols and devices communication A protocol is a convention or standard that controls or enables the connection communication and transfer between two computing endpoints The term protocol is very generic and is used for hundreds of different communications methods A protocol may define the packet structure of the data transmitted or the control commands that manage the session or both In its simplest form a protocol can be defined as the rules governing the syntax semantics and synchronization of communication Protocols may be implemented by hardware software or a combination of the two At the lowest level a protocol defines the behavior of a hardware
43. L extension to Oracle SQL is similar to PSM SQL lets you work with data at the logical level You need to be concerned with the implementation details only when you want to manipulate the data For example to retrieve a set of rows from a table you define a condition used to filter the rows All rows satisfying the condition are retrieved in a single step and can be passed as a unit to the user to another SQL statement or to an application You need not deal with the rows one by one nor do you have to worry about how they are physically stored or retrieved All SQL statements use the optimizer a part of Oracle Database that determines the most efficient means of accessing the specified data Oracle also provides techniques that you can use to make the optimizer perform its job better 18 www sql org 81 SQL provides statements for a variety of tasks including Querying data Inserting updating and deleting rows in a table Creating replacing altering and dropping objects Controlling access to the database and its objects Guaranteeing database consistency and integrity SQL unifies all of the preceding tasks in one consistent language In the ORACLE database the telemetry variables of all TNG instruments are stored Using the SQL standard language to communicate with the ORACLE the most important telemetry variables are retrieved by the interface allowing the user to exactly know the telescope position moreover the temper
44. MICI spectrum Hipp031303 J filter convolution 3 H filter convolution K filter convolution iA 2 aj Q GA 1 Q a 0 5 1 1 5 2 aD lambda Figure 32 The observed AMICI spectrum of Hip031303 black line and the same spectrum convolved with the J green line H blue line K red line filter profiles 95 Hip031308 hi 3 ao n t p gt ge 43 ae U an 5 ra n w t oa T Cani Y nay ri 3 ome ey fa t ma i rT ia 1 1 5 2 airmass Figure 33 Comparison of four AMICI spectra taken at different air masses for the star Hip031303 convolved with the filters profile J H K In particular the graphs in Figure 33 show that i as already emphasized by the Figure 29 and 30 the flux decreases with the increasing of the air mass and ii the atmospheric extinction is strongest in the K band rather than in others filters In particular the effect estimated as loss of relative flux is about 10 in the filter J and H and 30 in K As already found for AMICI spectra observed at different air masses a systematic deeper absorption features at higher air masses are observed together with a decrease of the relative flux 96 8 3 2 Molecular absorption bands and features As the main features and bands are the same for the spectra obtained from the two standard stars in the following I only show the results obtained for the star Hip031303 Figures 34 evidences
45. ORT CIRCUIT PROTECTION The PM monitors current going to the drive and will shut down its output if it detects a short circuit in the drive INTERNAL POWER DUMP The PM has an internal power dump circuit which can dissipate excess energy during load regeneration conditions OVERVOLTAGE The PM will shut down if there is excessive voltage at its output terminals TT OEM300 Power Module OEM Series Drives OEM Series Motors Figure 26 Internal OEM connection 6 4 LAKESHORE amp BALZERS Temperature amp Pressure monitor devices The temperature and pressure are measured by the Lakeshore and Balzers controllers The Lakeshore Model 330 is a microcontroller based Autotunning temperature controller This model accommodates three of the most common cryogenic temperature sensors with the flip of a switch These are field selectable without calibration Isolated excitation currents allow true four lead measurement of the sensors signals High resolution A D converters digitalize the signal at both inputs simultaneously for use in thermometry control and autotuning Precision thermometry is the most basic building block of any digital controller and is necessary for stable accurate control Careful analog design and ground isolation provide the Model 330 with stable and repeatable measurement Software in the Model 330 compares the measured value of the control sensor to the desired control setpoint an
46. Recovery of motor 7 when stuck at initialization Due to a manufacturing error the limit switches of this motor are mounted in parallel i e when one of the two is activated the controller sees both limit switches as active Consequently if the limit switches are active the motor is stuck i e cannot move in any direction and one cannot know at which of the two edges the axis is positioned The motor stuck condition can be recognized using the status command 7 S which under stuck conditions answers 11 7 where means that the digit is unimportant for this limit switch status control If the interface detects this condition it operates as follows 48 Check if at negative end Serial command Comment 7PZ Reset step encoder 7OSAI1 Define inverted status of limit switch 7D300 Prepare a small positive movement 7G Start movement will stop almost immediately 71S Check limit switch status Check if at positive end 7D 600 Prepare a small negative movement 7G Start movement will stop almost immediately 71S Check limit switch status if answer 00 7 Unlock and reset e Surrender and abort 7OSA0 Define normal status of limit switch then abort program interface with an alarm message e Unlock and reset 7OSAO0 Define normal status of limit switch then reset motor Obviously these operations must not be performed if motor
47. The GUI executes the mosaic command according to the following steps 1 2 Reads the mosaic file determines the offsets and stores the offsets values Moves the telescope to the first mosaic position and waits for telescope settling Obviously this operation is skipped in case the offset amplitudes are both 0 Acquires frame Moves telescope to next mosaic position and waits for telescope setting Repeats steps 3 4 until the mosaic ends Moves to the origin i e moves the telescope back to the original position of the mosaic and waits for telescope settling before reactivating the START button In case of a STOP or ABORT command the GUI sends the telescope directly to the step 6 5 1 2 Offsetting the telescope The interface can move the telescope sending to the tracking the command GDOFFS in the following format GDOFFS dAR dDEC 39 This command is issued to the telescope tracking system through the WSS bridge see Chapter 6 5 The parameters dAR and dDEC are the a and offsets in arcsec to give to the telescope Everytime this command is used the interface must wait for the telescope to settle first of all the time necessary for the tracking system to accept the command about 4 seconds thus periodically every second check the value of the telemetry variable TRKOK The telescope is settled when TRKOK 1 During this waiting the interface blocks the image acquisition but allows other operations e g handlin
48. The electronic noise is dominated by the detector and by the first cold amplifier and is 25 e if a suitable number of detector resets more than 32 is performed at each integration 4 1 NICS in imaging mode The LF offers a 4 2 x 4 2 FOV and a pixel scale of 0 25 pixel The LF images are on the other way characterized by a significant pin cushion distortion which is intrinsic to the optics design and amounts to 1 at the edges and 3 at the array corners This effect is wavelength independent and can be accurately modeled and corrected for during the image reduction The small field camera SF with its 2 1 x2 1 FOV and a pixel scale of 0 13 pixel is primarily intended for imaging programs requiring a fine sampling of the point spread function LF and SF main characteristics are shown in Table 1 Camera Image scale Field of view LF 0 25 pix 4 2 x 4 2 SF 0 13 pix 2 2 x 2 2 LF Adopt 0 08 pix 1 4 x 1 4 SF Adopt 0 04 pix 0 7 x 0 7 Table 1 Main characteristics of LF and SF camera The instrument is equipped with a number of broad and narrow band filters which are listed in Table 2 Filter Center wl um FWHM um K 2 20 0 34 K 2 12 0 35 H 1 63 0 30 J 1 27 0 30 Js 1 25 0 16 Imic 1 02 0 13 Kcont 2 275 0 039 Brgamma 2 169 0 035 H2 2 122 0 032 Fell 1 644 0 027 Heont 1 570 0 023 CH4s 1 60 0 12 CH4l1 1 68 0 12 SW Cut off 1 75 Cut off 1 75
49. Through Nbridge pass all the commands messages and errors to from the NICS GUI and server104 applications The communications between NICS GUI and Nbridge takes place by a socket This socket can be a local socket socket UNIX or an Internet socket The protocol used is structured in packages as suggested by the standard protocols used in Internet These communication packages have a standard format they are composed by an header formed by 8 words of 16 bits each and followed by 1400 bytes as maximum length of data field The structure of the header is described as follows Word Description Value examples I Magic number OxAS0OF 2 Destination NICS GUI Fasti 3 Type command data message ack 4 Command DUMMYREAD RUN 5 Data length Jorm 0 to 1400 6 Restricted 7 Package number _ form I to 65535 8 Checksum from 0 to 65535 1 Magic number This value contains a start package mask It s composed by a pattern of characteristic bits 10100101 00001111 making easier the protocol synchronization It accepts only the OxA5OF value 71 2 Destination Contains the pointer to the destination process for the package Description Value server 104 0x1001 nbridge 0x 1004 3 Type Contains informations about the package type CMD if is a command ACK if is a receiving check etc Description Value COMMAND 0x0010 MESSAGE 0x0020 ACK 0x0006 ERROR OxFF00
50. areas This mode can only be terminated by an ABORT command When a Free Run is started the interface checks the status of the motors simultaneously and move them in case they are not at the position defined by the observing mode Then activates the ABORT button and deactivate the set up buttons relative to the array parameters All the other set up buttons are left active This implies e g that the user can change the observing mode and move the motors using the maintenance panel while the free run is running which could be useful to verify directly if and how a given motor is moving The buttons used to interact with the image display remain active during the integration but is be deactivated when a new image is loaded The user can STOP or ABORT a running exposure or mosaic by selecting a suitable key This command pops up a Please confirm the stop or abort window which blocks all other buttons until the user answer In case the STOP is confirmed the interface saves the on going exposure frame on disk and stops the other exposures In case a mosaic is running the interface sends a move to origin command to the telescope and terminates the mosaic In case the ABORT is confirmed the interface aborts the on going integration of the detector and completes the the on going exposure In case a mosaic is running the interface sends a move to origin command to the telescope and stops the mosaic The Exposure Setup Panel also a
51. atabase is a collection of data treated as a unit The purpose of a database is to store and retrieve related information A database server is the key for solving the problems of information management In general a server reliably manages a large amount of data in a multiuser environment so that many users can concurrently access the same data All this is accomplished while delivering high performance A database server also prevents unauthorized access and provides efficient solutions for failure recovery Oracle Database is the first database designed for enterprise grid computing the most flexible and cost effective way to manage information and applications Enterprise grid computing creates large pools of industry standard modular storage and servers With this architecture each new system can be rapidly provisioned from the pool of components There is no need for peak workloads because capacity can be easily added or reallocated from the 17 http www oracle com lang it database index html 80 resource pools as needed The database has logical structures and physical structures Because the physical and logical structures are separate the physical storage of data can be managed without affecting the access to logical storage structures One of the most powerful tools to communicate with ORACLE is the SQL language SQL means Structured Query Language That is a database computer language designed for the retrieval and mana
52. ature and pressure variable are updated every 3 seconds allowing a complete monitoring of NICS status An example of SQL code acts to retrieve the temperature and pressure from ORACLE is shown below select variable_name name to_char to_date 19700101 YYYYMMDD data 86400 YYYY MM DD HH24 MI SS data num_value value from current_telemetry inner join hashtable using id where id between 150 and 154 order by id asc 82 Chapter 7 Notify NICS status via SMS for instrument responsible To simplify the instrument responsibles life and avoid troubleshoots due to anomalous level of pressure and temperature an additional facilities for NICS has been implemented The NICS Status Monitor NicSM is a useful utility which constantly and regularly watchs the instruments status and reports the problems sending an immediate notification to the responsibles by sending email and an SMS An example of the typical Status Email structure is Subject NICS Report Status GOOD Body The NicSM is based on a similar connection with ORACLE database used by the interface to retrieve the values of the parameters The software continuously monitors the NICS HEALT REPORT STATUS DELAY Date eee 2009 09 17 UPDATE Time U T eee 08 50 27 Pressure eee 7e 07 mbar Temperature Array 85 00 K Temperature_1 68 86 K Temperature_2 1 64 65 K Tempe
53. connection It is difficult to generalize about protocols because they vary so greatly in purpose and sophistication Most protocols specify one or more of the following properties Detection of the underlying physical connection wired or wireless or the existence of the other endpoint or node Handshaking Negotiation of various connection characteristics How to start and end a message How to format a message e What to do with corrupted or improperly formatted messages error correction How to detect unexpected loss of the connection and what to do next Termination of the session and or connection 70 Computers have no way of learning protocols so network engineers have written rules for communication that must be strictly followed for successful host to host communication 6 1 FASTI NBRIDGE The acquisition controller device is managed by a dedicated PC named PC104 in which runs a control software called server104 The server104 manages the acquisition system settings and acts like an interface for the array These tasks are executed under the total control of the low level software Nbridge running on the Pc embed Fasti The Nbridge application interacts also with the high level software NICS GUI which allows the users to manage NICS and starts the acquisitions We can image Nbridge as a bridge between the high level software NICS GUI and the middleware level software as the array control software
54. cting images spectra taken under variable sky conditions The values displayed in Figure 9 blue dots were determined from measurements of standard stars both in imaging and low resolution spectroscopy prism The data were corrected for the transmission of the optics filters and prism and normalized to the value at 2 2 micron given in the typical efficiency curve black triangles Evident and somewhat unexpected is the quite rapid decrease of efficiency below 1 4 microns which translates into a significant loss of sensitivity in the J and Imicron bands 4 4 NICS electronics The infrared detector control is named FASTI FASTI meant to be a light electronic system which is modular flexible extendible and avoids obsolescence as much as possible The design does not constrain the downhill controlling computer FASTI is seen as a peripheral through a network connection FASTI contains a central controller for start up general housekeeping global control of operations start integrations for example data collection formatting and buffering or for data pre processing when needed That is realized with a disk less embedded computer using an Intel or Alpha family CPU and a number of commercial boards There are many advantages in this choice e itis very flexible and its behavior can be easily changed e itis fast and capable of substantial data pre processing e it has plenty of built in or easily available interfaces it is much cheap
55. d acts with the three term PID control function to minimize the difference Control parameters can be entered manually or by the autotuning algorithm Up to 50 watts of heater power is available to control a variety of cryogenic cooling systems The power output of the Model 330 is a quiet variable DC current to ensure as little noise coupling as possible between the heater and experiment Two lower heater ranges allow for a variety of cooling systems The Model 330 allows up to ten user defined temperature zones to be entered over the interface The setpoint ramp settable from 0 1 to 99 9 K min allows the user to set the rate at which the setpoint increases or decreases when changed EEE 488 and serial interface 78 provide remote access to data and stored parameters in the Model 330 and allow setting of most front panel functions The Pfeiffer Balzer DualGauge TPG 262 is a dual channel measurement and control unit for compact gauges It is allowed to measure pressure from 1 000 mbar up to 5x10 mbar These two devices are connected to the Lantronix ETS8P device with a standard serial connection RS232C and send to the archive ORACLE the T P status every few seconds 6 5 WSS BRIDGE middleware level software for the telescope tracking WSS Bridge see Figure 27 is a software solution that provides a bridge between the outside world and the WSS Telescope Control System The principle is very simple there is a server process which p
56. de all the informations to the responsibles and must be easy to understand To create an exhaustive but compact SMS I have studied a structure as described in the following table Subject NICS Warning Text Time 15 14 58 2009 09 16 OK Press GREEN OK Tdewar RED NO T1 GREEN OK T2GREEN OK T3 GREEN OK The labels GREEN YELLOW RED as in the emails change in base of the wrong values The second column shows if the values are updated or not In the case above I show an example of the dewar temperature Tdewar fault and the reasons is that it s obsolete the second column report a NO 85 Chapter 8 GUI tests Atmospheric extinction Although some astronomical spectroscopy today is done using space based telescopes much is still done in ground based observatories Ground based astronomical spectroscopy is plagued by absorption extinction within the atmosphere Absorption features that originate in the Earth s atmosphere are referred to as telluric features and are prevalent in the IR and visible regions of the spectrum There is significant atmospheric transmission across the entire 1 to 2 5 um wavelength region but large sections of it are strongly affected by molecular absorption The main absorbers are CO2 and H2O with weaker features of CH4 and O2 etc see Figure 27 These features must be removed from spectra observed with ground based telescopes to derive the true spectrum of the astronomical source
57. display of FITS images and binary tables multiple frame buffers region cursor manipulation many scale algorithms and colormaps and easy communication with external analysis tasks It is highly configurable and extensible to meet the evolving needs of the astronomical community In particular SA4O mage XPA messaging system provides an easy communication between DS9 and other Unix Linux tasks including X programs and a few scripting languages It also provides an easy way for users to communicate with DS9 by executing XPA client commands in the shell or by using such commands in scripts Because XPA works at the programming as well as shell levels it is a powerful tool to interface different environment packages In order to make Ds9 a suitable tool only for a quick look during the observation the source code has been modified To avoid undesiderable activities on the GUI i e data reduction the user can only perform a few essential actions set the zoom change scale and color display enable horizontal vertical cut graph Manual loading of fits files is disabled only images present in the NICS archieve may be loaded Figure 14 compares the standard Ds9 on the left and the modifed Ds9 version on the right The toolbar on the top has been disabled to avoid operations not strictly tied up with the observations Two information boxes for automatic visualization of the mean and the standard deviation in a box of 9x9 pixel around the mouse p
58. e X i sin Y i cos Move to origin from current m th position dAR Scalex gt X j cos me J 1 J 1 dDEC Scale _ X j sin o9 ru cos J1 1 Where Scale is the pixel scale in arcsec pix which depends on observing mode as follows IMA LF 0 25 SPE POL 0 25 IMA SF 0 13 IMA LF AdOpt 0 086 IMA SF AdOpt 0 043 The angle 0 is the position angle of the frame defined as the angle between the detector Y axis and the North direction The angle increases going from North to East This parameter is computed as follows 0 RPAOFF NICS_DEROFF where RPAOFF is a telemetry variable generated by the telescope tracking system while NICS_DEROFF is a constant which must be stored and read from the configuration file overall_config nics During a mosaic the values of DEL_RA DEL_DEC are shown in green if the mosaic is of type REL2ZSOURCE_AD or REL2LAST AD otherwise in default color gray for REL2SOURCE_XY or REL2LAST_XY The values of DEL X DEL_Y are shown in green if the mosaic is of type REL2SOURCE_XY or REL2LAST_XY otherwise in default color gray for REL2SOURCE_AD or REL2LAST_AD 41 5 1 4 Structure of the fits files The images are stored in 7 2 fits files The name of the each file is XXXZiiii fis where XXX is the session name which is create by the telescope tracking and read from the database It is a unique 3 letter counter which is n
59. e super user for maintenance purposes Set mode normal for all motors MN Set step resolution for all motors amp MR1000 Set absolute step encoder mode for all motors MPA Set acceleration for all motors Al 5 Set acceleration for motor 2 2A0 5 Set acceleration for motor 3 3A1 5 54 Set velocity for all motors V2 Set velocity for motor 2 2V0 3 Set velocity for motor 3 3V1 5 Set active state of home switch for all motors OSCI Set active state of limit switches for all motors OSAO Set back to home option for all motors OSBO Set power on to all motors STO The Maintenance window also manages the calibration lamps allowing the superuser to exclude via software one or more motors The checkbutton in red means that the motor is active If a checkbutton is pressed the procedure modifies the status of the motor into the file motors_config nics passing from 1 active to 0 disabled Only the motors with status 1 are implied in the positioning motor procedures An examples of motors_config nics file is shown in Appendix B 5 3 Quicklook and pre reduction window The Quick look procedure is performed by a modified version of SAO mage DS9 The Ds9 is the next version of the popular S4Omg display program It is a Tk Tcl application which utilizes the SAOtk widget set It also incorporates the new X Public Access XPA mechanism to allow external processes to access and control its data GUI functions and algorithms DS9 supports the direct
60. e window allows all low level remote operations related to the motion of different motors This panel has been designed and tested to work as an entry command The NICS superuser can type and send command directly to the controller without any filtering by the interface In this case the log window reports detailed informations of what is happening during the execution of the command a single motor movement manager The position of every motor is codified both in terms of encoder absolute and actual position the latter is named GUI units in the panel The difference between the two units has been explained above for rotational motors and depends on the number of times that a given wheel performs a complete turn To move a motor one has to fill the corresponding entry NEW pos with the value expressed in GUI units The entering of wrong values either out of possible range or mistyped do not produce any movement and generate an error message e a motion display for each motor To the right side of each encoder absolute position and GUI position there is a transparent label which becomes active as soon as the corresponding motor is starting These labels display the motor position every one in its own units and are active until the end of motion As soon as the motor stops the new final position are updated in the corresponding labels a hardware status display The interface reports for each motor an
61. ed Motor 4 rotates the filters wheel which can house up to 21 optical elements The step encoders corresponding to the filters positions are listed in the text file motor4_pos nics which can be edited for maintenance purposes The wheel can rotate freely no mechanical blocks and has one home switch used to define the zero position A complete 360 turn requires about 60 000 motor steps the exact value is stored in the configuration file motors_config nics Motor 5 rotates the grisms wheel which can house up to 18 optical elements The step encoders corresponding to the grisms positions are listed in the text file motor5_pos nics which can be edited for maintenance purposes The wheel can rotate freely no mechanical blocks and has one home switch used to define the zero position A complete 360 turn requires about 60 000 motor steps the exact value is stored in the configuration file motors_config nics Motor 6 rotates the apertures wheel which can houses up to 15 optical elements The step encoders corresponding to the apertures positions are listed in the text file motor5S_pos nics which can be edited for maintenance purposes The wheel can rotate freely no mechanical blocks and has one home switch used to define the zero position A complete 360 turn requires about 200 000 motor steps the exact value is stored in the configuration file motors_config nics Motor 7 rotates the mask wheel sector housing up to 3 mas
62. ed and then the final 2 D spectrum will be divided by the flat field The coadding spectra is a technique in which the spectra are combined to increase the signal to noise ratio In case of dithering each A B B A pair will be divided by the flat field then the corresponding 1 D spectra will be extracted and co added Flat fields are obtained by taking many exposures of an halogen lamp switched on and off thus computing the difference on off and normalizing the final 2 D frame As emphasized at the beginning of this chapter the most prominent absorption features in the near IR spectra are the telluric features due to the Earth s Atmosphere Correction for telluric lines is computed by observing suitable telluric standard stars Such telluric standards are not standards in the classical sense at all they are simply bright stars of known spectral type for which the intrinsic stellar features are either negligible or easily recognized and separated from features introduced by the Earth s atmosphere Normally the telluric lines do not scale linearly with air mass so it is necessary to observe a star which we call a telluric standard at an air mass as close as possible to that of the target and with the same instrumental setup The choice of the best telluric standard depends on the spectral resolution and on the wavelength regime of interest Stars of spectral type O and early B are the most featureless in the near IR they only s
63. eed The motor controller foresees a specific command GH to perform the reset operation The parameters to be set are the direction and the speed This command also sets to zero the step encoder at the end of the operation The resets of NICS wheels are all performed in the negative direction and with different speeds for the different motors In case of mechanical problems with the axis e g stuck or electrical problems with the home switch e g disconnected the reset command would result in a never ending rotation of the motor driving the wheel This must be prevented using the following strategy Using the command W3 the interface can monitor the reset process and count the number of steps moved since command has been issued If this number largely exceeds the number of steps corresponding to a 360 turn N defined in motors config nics the interface stops the movement command nS and displays an error message 50 Due to a manufacturing error the negative limit switch of axis 2 and 3 are mounted very close to the home switch Consequently the GH procedure cannot be performed in a self consistent way and the resetting of the motor must rely on the information provided by the limit switch The procedure in this case is as follows Motor 2 Serial Command Comment 2MPI Set incremental moving mode 2D 9500 Prepare movement toward negative limit switch number tota
64. eeded to perform scientific exposures instrument setup initializations calibration units setting and exposure time count down This block is responsible for frame storage and visualization using the Quick look task Data Pre Reduction software DRS it provides a high level interface necessary to make fast analysis pre reduction on all the NICS acquired frames like a sky subtraction apply a cross talk correction etc The NICS interface communicates with the array control system via socket through a 31 dedicated bridge program running on the same PC see Chapter 6 1 The DCS consists of two different parts the first resides inside the PC Linux and the second runs on the embedded processor at the focal plane electronics and has direct access to the hardware The two branches are interfaced by means of a standard Ethernet connection on which data and commands are sent to Unix like sockets The software portion inside the embedded processor manages the data flow controls and can handle special observing modes such as multiple starts and stops More specifically it can perform any of the following tasks setting the array read out mode and detector integration time DIT starting an integration and at its end transferring the resulting frame to the instrument workstation averaging a NDIT number of individual DITs before transferring the image e executing a sequence of dummy images useful to clean the array fr
65. een 300 and 1300 very low dispersion long slit 4 slit spectroscopy with a resolving power 50 by means of an Amici prism imaging polarimetry for both wide and small field imaging mode Polarimetry imaging is performed on only 1 4 of the FOV but simultaneously on four directions of polarization angle 0 45 90 and 135 degrees with a clear gain of relative sensitivity 20 spectro polarimetry with a reduced 25 slit length but with four directions of polarization angle 0 45 90 and 135 degrees measured simultaneously Three of these modes low dispersion long slit spectroscopy and simultaneous angle polarimetry spectro polarimetry are unique to NICS Baffa C 2001 and provide the possibility to reliably perform these measurements in the infrared Aperture Wheel Collima tor Filters Wheel Grisms Wheel LF Camera Detector Window SF camera Figure 4 Mechanical Layout of NICS cryostat NICS is mounted at the same focal station as the optical CCD camera A plane mirror M4 mounted on a _ remotely operated sliding bench deflects the beam from the telescope to the entrance of the IR camera that has its optical axes perpendicular respect to the telescope beam The optical scheme comprises the single collimator and the two cameras All the optical components reside in a vacuum at a temperature of about 80 K inside a suitable cryostat see Figure 4 for details The focal plane masks
66. en 3 to 9999 There is no default value for this parameter NDIT is the number of single frames which are averaged before writing the image on the disk The average is performed by the lower level software The value of NDIT can vary between 1 and 100 The default value is 1 36 NINT is the number of averaged frames to be written the disk The value of NINT can vary between 1 and 9999 The default value is 1 Examples e DIT 20 NDIT 2 NINT 4 take and save on disk 4 frames each of them containing the average of 2 images of 20 sec on chip integration time e DIT 900 NDIT 1 NINT 1 take and save on disk 1 frame containing 1 image of 900 sec on chip integration time When an Acquisition is started the interface check the status of the motors and moves them in case they are not at the position defined by the observing mode Then simultaneously it activates the STOP and ABORT buttons and deactivates all set up buttons observing mode array parameters mosaic definition maintenance controls etc EXIT button always remains active FreeRun procedure continuously acquires frames of 3 seconds exposure time and displays the results without saving the images into the archive The images are nevertheless available on disk as temporary fits files and may be used for quick on line analysis e g display subtracted frames display images divided by reference flat frames compute FWHM of stellar images perform statistics of sub
67. er large field camera and 5 magnitude attenuator It is obtained by positioning motor at its LF position motor 2 at its LFI position motor 3 at its in position motor 4 at its H position motor 5 at its gray5 position motor 6 at its LF position and motor 7 at its open position The second setup corresponds to spectroscopy with the Amici prism disperser 0 75 slit and without attenuator it is obtained by positioning motor at its LFS position motor 2 at its LFI position motor 3 at its in position motor 4 at its open position motor 5 at its AMICI position motor 6 at its 0 75 position and motor 7 at its open position The third setup corresponds to a dark measurement in spectroscopic mode and is obtained by positioning motor at its LFS position motor 5 at its close position and 34 leaving the other motors at the current position keyword any The translation between motor position keywords and physical positions i e encoder steps is performed using the information contained in the text files motorl_ pos nics through motor7_pos nics which can be edited by the super user for maintenance purposes The structure of these files is described in the header and comment lines of each file The acquisition window Figure 11 allows the users to have a full control of NICS show the overall NICS status telemetry variables and allows users to manage acq
68. er compared to alternate solutions based on custom interface adapters itis seen by the instrument controller computer as a socket in a standard or fast Ethernet connection giving no constraints on it e itis scalable and can be replaced with similar models hopefully more powerful without big modifications to the existing software The global characteristics are e standard interfaces and bus a serial port a parallel port Ethernet PCI bus no moving part such as hard or floppy disk drivers very fast parallel interface described later it can be used as an embedded system with no external human interaction 28 The FASTI control electronics continuously takes short dummy frames during the idle time for cleaning the array The clear array procedure which was formerly mandatory when switching from imaging to spectroscopy should be now used only in very extreme cases e g when starting a very long spectroscopic integration after having centered the target using images of a field with one or more saturated objects Table 7 summarizes the values of detector integration times the minimum on chip integration time is 3 seconds which should guarantee good performances for observations of faint objects Entries marked with a indicate that the maximum value of DIT Detector Integration Time is not sufficient to guarantee background limited performances The imaging with the SF should require integration times a factor
69. er user for maintenance purposes into the Maintenance GUI which allows the user to modify the active motors column contained in motors_config nics file simply using a checkbutton All motors have a relative checkbutton which allows superuser to include exclude it for the movements The format of this text file is described in the header and comment lines of the file itself The most obvious problem is when the controllers do not respond to the serial commands in such a case the interface should exit issuing a suitable message It may also occur that the serial communication works correctly but one or more of the controllers do not work properly These faults can be detected using the command nJS and checking the status of the first second third and fifth digit which are 1 when everything works fine and 0 otherwise In other words the controller is OK only as long as the nIP interface 5 2 5 Resetting the motors The rotating wheels i e motors 1 4 5 and 6 are equipped with an electro mechanical switch home switch which is activated by a shaft when the system is at a given mechanical position The reset procedure consists therefore of moving the motor in a given direction until the controllers detects a change of state of the signal connected to the home switch To guarantee the maximum precision and repeatability of this positioning the axis should always approach the home switch from the same direction and with the same sp
70. face between the low level software and the astronomer Hence it includes several GUI to provide a full control of all sub systems the scientific software It includes the observing block preparation tools and the off line data reduction pipeline The goal of the low level software is to interact directly with the hardware and to provide an easy to use interface between the electrical devices and the high level software The low level software typically manages directly electronic devices like array temperature pressure sensors motors calibration lamps etc Usually it is equipped with a command line interface which allows to communicate using a serial or socket connection to the external world The middle level software is very useful when we have to communicate with the array It is very important to provide a secure and clean communication to prevent damages of these delicate devices The middle level software provides to do that managing the errors before their arrival to the low level software and ensuring a good quality communication checking all commands sent to the array The high level software provides an interface between the users and the low middle level software It manages all human errors allowing the interaction with all instruments and devices It allows to monitor and have a full control of all sub systems such as the telemetry the calibration lamps status the motors status and the setting up of all the observational
71. from mobile users from fixed network subscribers or from other sources such as VASPs It is also possible on some carriers for non subscribers to send messages to a subscriber s phone using an E Mail to SMS gateway Additionally many carriers offer the ability to do this through their respective websites For example an AT amp T subscriber whose phone number was 555 555 5555 would receive e mails to 5555555555 txt att net as text messages Sending a message this way is free but subject to the normal length limit 111 References Baffa C Comoretto G Gennari S et al 2001 A amp A 378 722 NICS The TNG Near Infrared Camera Spectrometer Baffa C Giani E 2006 Internal report Protocollo di comunicazione tra il programma Gbridge e l interfaccia utente Bailey J Simpson A Crisp D 2007 PASP 119 228 Correcting Infrared Spectra for Atmospheric Transmission Barbieri C Zambon M 1989 G Astron Vol 15 N 3 4 p 3 Il telescopio nazionale Galileo Gennari Sandro Vanzi Leonardo Lisi Franco 1995 Proc SPIE Vol 2475 p 221 227 Optical design of the infrared camera for the Galileo Telescope TNG Kenworthy M A Hanson M M 2004 PASP 116 97 Minimizing Strong Telluric Absorption in Near Infrared Stellar Spectra Lisi F Baffa C Bilotti V Bonaccini D et al 1996 PASP 108 346 ARNICA the Arcetri Near Infrared Camera Oliva E Origlia L Baffa C et al 2006 Proc SPIE Vol 6269
72. g of the display etc In case the waiting lasts more than 30 seconds parameter to be stored and read from the configuration file overall_config nics the interface times out produces an error message If a mosaic is running the interface suspends the mosaic leaving the telescope in the current position and informs the user of the amplitude of the a offsets which must be manually applied to return to the origin position of the mosaic 5 1 3 Computing the offsets of a mosaic Depending on the mosaic mode the telescope offsets are determined as follows Let 9 be the position angle of the frame Let X i Y i be the entries of the i th line of the mosaic file Let X 0 0 0 and Y 0 0 0 REL2SOURCE_AD Move to the next i th position OAR i X i X i 1 dDEC i Y i Y i 1 Move to origin from current m th position GAR X m dDEC Y m REL2LAST_AD Move to the next i th position dAR i X i ADEC I Y i Move to origin from current m th position AR X j dDEC gt Y j J 1 J 1 REL2SOURCE XY Move to the next i th position dAR i Scale X i X i 1 cos p Y Y i 1 sin p dDEC i Scale X i X i 1 sin p Y i Y i 1 cos p 40 Move to origin from current m th position dAR Scale X m cos 8 Y m sin daDEC Scale X m sin Y m cos REL2LAST_XY Move to the next i th position dAR Scale X i cos Y i sin dDEC Scal
73. gement of data in relational database management systems RDBMS database schema creation and modification and database object access control management SQL is a standard interactive and programming language for querying and modifying data and managing databases Although SQL is both an ANSI and an ISO standard many database products support SQL with proprietary extensions to the standard language The core of SQL is formed by a command language that allows the retrieval insertion updating and deletion of data and performing management and administrative functions SQL also includes a Call Level Interface SQL CLI for accessing and managing data and databases remotely The strengths of SQL provide benefits for all types of users including application programmers database administrators managers and end users Technically speaking SQL is a data sub language The purpose of SQL is to provide an interface to a relational database such as Oracle Database and all SQL statements are instructions to the database In this SQL differs from general purpose programming languages like C and BASIC Among the features of SQL are the following It processes sets of data as groups rather than as individual units It provides automatic navigation to the data It uses statements that are complex and powerful individually and that therefore stand alone Flow control statements are commonly known as persistent stored modules PSM and the PL SQ
74. he red The Amici prism on the contrary delivers a spectrum with a quasi constant resolving power and its dispersion varies by more than a factor of 3 over its spectral range All the low resolution dispersers can be used in combination with the gray filters to take spectra of very bright objects which would otherwise saturate the array Figure 6 shows the resolving power associated to the 1 slit and the efficiency of the available grisms which are resin replicated Milton Roy gratings on IRGn6 prisms Vitali et al 2000 NICS dispersers Low resolution Name wl range um dispersion A pix Res power with 1 slit Amici 0 8 2 5 30 100 50 IJ 0 9 1 45 5 5 500 JH 1 15 1 75 6 6 500 JK 1 15 2 23 11 6 350 HK 1 40 2 50 11 2 500 High resolution Imic 0 96 1 09 2 0 1250 Js 1 17 1 33 2 5 1200 J 1 12 1 40 25 1200 H 1 48 1 78 3 5 1150 KB 1 95 2 34 4 3 1250 Table 6 NICS grism dispensers and main characteristics L T T T T F T T J 1500 F i i R JJs a H KB Sage 3 1000 F ai ad a 3 H 4 a L ap IJ ee a Amici i Bo mici pe L I t IJ JH JK J gt 60l HK J q L o C ie J k2 40 a i ra Lt oe i 4 20 b 1 gi J C 1 pe 4 J 0 C l Es i iSi 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 0 1 5 x um 2 0 2 5 Figure 6 Resolving power and efficiency of NICS grisms 25 4 3 NICS detector The detector is a Rockwell 1024
75. how a few Hell and or Hel lines but they are also relatively rare and so it may be hard to find at a good air mass match with the target 89 The photospheric emission of such hot stars can be approximated by a blackbody curve The spectral type of the star and its photometric colors can provide an estimate of its temperature The blackbody curve is then multiplied into the object spectrum to recover the intrinsic spectral shape of the scientific target Early to mid A and late B dwarfs have primarily hydrogen recombination lines which are quite strong and highly pressure broadened However these lines can be fit and removed in a fairly straight forward way and techniques and software exist to do this Matthew A et al 2003 so these are the spectral types most commonly used If one is interested specifically in measuring hydrogen lines in the science target they may not be the best choice IN GOV stars the hydrogen lines are considerably weaker and many of the weaker lines seen in A dwarfs are essentially negligible however lines of Mg Si Fe and other elements are strong Intrinsic lines in G2V spectra can be fit using high resolution high signal to noise solar spectra At early mid F many of the hydrogen lines still are intermediate in strength and width and almost all of the lines of other atomic species are not yet very noticeable Hence these spectral types may offer a reasonable compromise particularly at low to moderate res
76. ibility of a ACK received check Every CMD packages sent from the GUI to the server 04 or to the Nbridge will be confirmed by the receiving process with a ACK type package built as follows Position in header Sent package ACK package 1 OxASOF OxASOF 2 0x1001 0x1003 3 0x0010 COMMAND 0x0006 ACK 4 0x0400 STATUS 0x0400 STATUS 5 0 6 ue eee 7 ll ll amp Checksum Checksum 6 2 LANTRONIX The Lantronix ETS8p is a Multiport Device Servers that provides shared network access to terminals devices console ports and printers for a variety of network protocols and operating systems The ETS supports the TCP IP IPX NetWare Local Area Transport LAT AppleTalk EtherTalk and Microsoft LAN Manager protocols This device is used to communicate and manage the OEM Compumotor devices calibration lamps and pressure temperature devices Figure 24 shows a connection scheme between Pc Fasti and the other devices using a Lantronix ETS8P The management of all NICS sensors and controls of the mechanical movements are a crucial point that must be handled by dedicated functions called Instrument Status IS The more practical solution to build IS block is to use a socket transmission protocol between the PC and the related hardware controller In case of serial controllers it is possible to use a serial Ethernet transceiver like e g the commercial Lantronix multi port devices Each 16 http www
77. ining dynamic modifiability Tcl stands for Tool Command Language Tcl is a scripting language and an interpreter for that language that is designed to be easy to embed into the applications Tcl and its associated graphical user interface toolkit Tk were designed and crafted by Professor John Ousterhout of the Berkeley University of California and provides a virtual machine that is portable across UNIX Windows and Macintosh environments The Tcl interpreter has been ported from UNIX to DOS Windows OS 2 NT and Macintosh environments The Tk toolkit has been ported from the X window system to Windows and Macintosh As a scripting language Tcl is similar to other UNIX shell languages such as the Bourne 3 hAttp www tcl tk about index html 16 Shell sh the C Shell csh the Korn Shell ksh and Perl Shell programs let you execute other programs They provide enough programmability variables control flow and procedures to let you build complex scripts that assemble existing programs into a new tool tailored for your needs It is the ability to easily add a Tcl interpreter to your application that sets it apart from other shells Tcl fills the role of an extension language that is used to configure and customize applications The Tcl C library has clean interfaces and it is simple to use The library implements the basic interpreter and a set of core scripting commands that implement variables flow control and proced
78. ks useful for polarimetric observations The step encoders corresponding to the masks positions are listed in the text file motor7_pos nics which can be edited for maintenance purposes The wheel sector cannot rotate freely and has two limit switches limiting the movement from about 0 steps to about 50 000 steps Besides these hardware limits the interface also foresees software limits which are defined in the configuration file motors_config nics and are used to avoid approaching the limit switches during normal operations Due to a manufacturing error the two limit switches are connected in parallel i e the controller cannot recognize which of the two is activated Consequently this motor requires ad hoc operations for defining the zero position and for the initialization 44 The motors which activates rotation movements 1 4 5 and 6 can rotate freely both clockwise and or anticlockwise and have only a home switch defining their zero points The number of step corresponding to a complete 360 turn varies from 60 000 to 200 000 steps depending on the motor Of course it is convenient to make the motor move in the rotational direction that minimize the motion and consequently the time needed to accomplish it This implies that the step encoder may have positive or negative values depending on the rotational direction However the step encoder may have values which can be extremely large depending on the number of
79. l NICS motor interface is able to communicate with the OEM750X controller see Chapter 6 3 in two different ways through a direct serial connection when the controller is linked directly with the serial port of NICS workstation or by means of an IP socket when the controller is linked to a port of the terminal server ETSSPS see Chapter 6 2 The interface also has an internal queue manager which activates when the resetting procedures are launched This algorithm is extremely useful when dealing with motor 7 whose resetting and or recovering proceeds through a series of logical conditions Finally each operation done using this new NICS motor interface is recorded in a local rotational log file Rossetti E 2008 5 2 1 Interface encoder absolute counter and historic log When the wheels are moving the step encoders from the controller may have negative values or values larger then N the number of steps corresponding to a complete 360 round This occurs for example when passing through the zero position To avoid confusion the program uses the interface encoders X defined as X X i N O lt X lt N where x is the step encoder read from the controller and i is an integer number which is updated by the interface whenever necessary The GUI should only display the value of X All the positions stored in the configuration files motor pos nics are measured in interface encoder units i e are gt 0 and lt N When targeti
80. l length of the slide 500 2G Start movement wait count Follow movement until motor stops 2MPA Set absolute moving mode 21S Check limit switch status should be 10 2 2PZ Reset step encoder Motor 3 Serial Command Comment 3MPI Set incremental moving mode 3VO 3 Set a slow velocity for the motor 3D 3350 Prepare movement toward negative limit switch number total length of the slide 500 3G Start movement wait count Follow movement until motor stops 3MPA Set absolute moving mode 31S Check limit switch status should be 10 3 3PZ Reset step encoder 3V1 Set normal velocity for the motor Due to a manufacturing error the seventh axis does not have a home switch Moreover the limit switches are mounted in parallel i e when one of the two is activated the controller sees both limit switches as active Hence the reset of the axis must be performed using the information available from the limit switch as follows 51 Serial command Comment 7IS Check limit switch status must be 00 7 if not follow emergency recovery 7V0 3 Set a slow velocity for the motor 7MPI Set incremental moving mod 7D 60000 Prepare movement toward negative limit switch number total length of sector 500 7G Start movement wait count Follow movement until motor stops 7IS Check limit switch status it should be 11 7 7OSAI Define inverted status of limit switch 7D1000 P
81. lgorithm should be performed default is yes An option for exiting from the procedure is also available If the centering is requested the interface determines the centroids X Yc of the object using a suitable centering algorithm If the algorithm does not properly work e g error in fitting center values outside the box the interface issues an error message and return to step 4 If no centering algorithm is requested the parameters X Ycare set equal to the mouse position The program computes the distortion corrected distance in pixels AX and AY from the target position and transforms them in a 6 offsets dAR i Scale AXcos p AYsin p dDEC i Scale AXsin p AYcos p where 9 is the position angle and Scale is the pixel scale arcsec pix correspondent to the LF objective 0 25 pix 64 7 The interface offsets the telescope by the computed amounts and waits for telescope settling 8 The interface acquires a new frame displays it and asks if the user wants to repeat the centering procedure If not it exits from the procedure Thu Feb 12 10 20 AM Vincenzo Guido 6 Qh a SAOImage Quicklook o QuickLook DS9 o x Current image JPVZ0017 fts Sky Image 7 File JPVZ0017 fts opt on centro in si Too Value wes Move obj Image x Y Frame 1 Zoom 0 593 Angle 0 000 Mean 830 20 Stdev 42 35
82. llows to manage the calibration lamps NICS is equipped with three different calibration lamps Halogen Xenon Argon and a diffusor The procedure to manage the calibration lamps allows the user to put the diffusor in position ON OFF and switch ON OFF one or more lamps at a time 37 The connection between the GUI and the lamps is guaranteed by the port number 5 on the Lantronix Using this connection the following list of commands allows to manage the calibration lamps Command Description 5 6 Halogen ON OFF 7 8 Argon ON OFF 9 0 Xenon ON OFF r read all lamps status a put diffusor in ON OFF state When the GUI is starting up an r command is sent to the lamps and their actual status is shown into the GUI The user must wait approximately 20 seconds while the diffusor is positioning During this time the acquisition buttons are disabled but the user can continue working on the current or latest image During the diffusor positioning the label Dif Figure 12 is shown in blue color to notify that diffusor is moving The color become light green when the diffusor is in close position I Stet La Figure 12 All lamps OFF and the diffusor in Close position left Halogen and Xeno lamps ON right Finally the GUI shutdown procedure checks the status of the lamps before close the GUI and notifies when necessary if some lamps are ON or if the diffusor is in open posi
83. ls components and a logging component One connection pool listen on the port 9000 This is the port the outside clients connect to in order to talk with the WSS Telescope Control System The other port 900 is the port used by the native AP from WSS The WSS Bridge Server uses a configuration file in order to know which AP should perform the requested action from an outside client This also permits to have a setup where one AP is responsible for executing actions for different units so you get an easy mechanism for load balancing 79 The logging facilities also uses a separate configuration file so that you don t need to change the main configuration to add for example a new logging dispatcher The WSS Bridge Server uses a simple mechanism to know to which outside client belongs an action It attachs the client unique ID to the message sent to the BRG AP then the BRG AP uses this ID only to compose the response message which then will be parsed again by the WSS Bridge Server to send the response coming from the BRG AP back to the correct client The WSS Bridge Server parses all the messages going through so that it checks if a message coming from an outside client is malformed before sending it to a BRG AP Pretacal get chakanustry warkah la set telemetry variables and teamed variables Sakis 7 Figure 27 Schematic representation of WSS bridge Tracking connection 6 6 ORACLE instruments variables archive An Oracle d
84. minals with mouse and hotkey functionality direct output to pen plotters or modern printers and output to many file formats eps fig jpeg LaTeX metafont pbm pdf png postscript svg 2 Applications Places System oO SAOImage Quicklook Thu Feb 12 10 24AM Vincenzo Guido gt a QuickLook DS9 Jox Current image JPVZ0017 fis Sky Image y File JPVZ0017 fts Object N1893_N10 Center obj in slit Value wcs Move obj Image x Y Frame 1 Zoom 2 593 Angle 0 000 Stdev Gnuplot unset surface set pm3d at st surface and top 10000 Xcent 333 911 2 Ycent 677 192 PE Ellipticity 0 079 PE Flux 563 2354 5 FWHM 3 81 Continue analysis e 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 K m saoimage Quicklook QuickLook DS9 O Dialog O gplt Figure 22 Object analysis procedure allows user to know the most important parameters of the selected object and shows a 3D graph of it For the spectrum analysis the interface implements the Eclipse software The Spectrum extraction procedure asks to the user to select with a click of the mouse an upper and a lower limit containing the spectrum and the position of the spectrum into the array These values are sent to the Eclipse software which extracts the spectrum and shows the graph into a Gnuplot
85. motions Due to the bent structure of its molecule water vapour exhibits a very large number of absorption lines along whole the spectra The Earth presents strong absorption features at 0 8 m and 1 26 um bands likely produced by molecular oxygen O2 and oxygen collision complexes including collisions between O and No Oxygen is supplied to the atmosphere from formation of sedimentary rocks and as a result of photodisintegration of water vapour in the upper atmosphere layers In the 1 6 micron region CH4and C0 have significant absorption features Figure 38 shows an HK spectrum for the star Hip031303 with marked the most important telluric features while Figures 39 to 41 show some zoomed regions of such a spectrum 99 Relative flux 1 4 1 6 1 8 2 2 2 2 4 wavelength p Figure 38 Absorption features in an HK spectrum for the star Hip031303 08 Relative flux i o gt a 0 2 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 wavelength p Figure 39 Absorption features in the 1 35 to 1 8 um region of an HK spectrum for the star Hip031303 100 0 6 Relative flux a 1 7 18 1 9 2 2 1 2 2 wavelength p Figure 40 Absorption features in the 1 7 to 2 1 um region of a HK spectrum for the star Hip031303 Relative flux gt D ee a 02 2 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 wavelength p Figure 41 Absorption features in the 2 0 to 2 5 um region of an HK spectrum for the Hip031303 101 Figure 42 shows a
86. motor n nG Start movement of all motors at once G Send message when movement has terminated n message where message isa lt 17 characters string Get step encoder value for motor n nPR WARNING responds only when motor is not moving Get indexer status of motor n nR Get hardware status of motor n nlS returns limit switches status and general status of the hardware Get steps moved since last G command nW3 useful to get telemetry when motor is moving Stop movement of motor n nS Stop all movements S Switch off motor n nST1 Switch off all motors STI Whenever a change of the setup is requested all the motors involved are moved at the same time The interface must follow the evolution of the movement command W3 used only for relatively long movements and define the motor as ready once the trajectory is completed This last condition can be checked using the command R or more simply just waiting for the message string which can be requested just after the beginning of the movement Note that the motors may stop at a position slightly 1 2 steps typically different than the target value This error is accepted as long as it remains below the threshold defined in the configuration file motors_config nics Initialization commands have to be sent whenever a new connection with the controller is established i e at interface startup These commands are stored in a text file motors_iniseq nics which can be edited by th
87. n JH spectrum for the star Hip031303 with emphasized the most important telluric features while Figures 43 to 45 show some zoomed regions of such a spectrum 08 Relative flux oO D gt a 0 2 1 2 1 4 1 6 1 8 wavelength p Figure 42 Absorption features in a JH spectrum for the star Hip031303 Relative flux gt a 0 2 1 05 i 1 15 1 2 1 25 1 3 wavelength p Figure 43 Absorption features in the 1 05 to 1 3 um region of a JH spectrum for the star Hip03 1303 102 08 Relative flux Oo fo a 0 2 13 1 35 1 4 1 45 15 1 55 wavelength p Figure 44 Absorption features in the 1 3 to 1 55 um region of a JH spectrum for the star Hip031303 08 Relative flux a S a 0 2 15 1 6 1 7 1 8 wavelength p Figure 45 Absorption features in the 1 5 to 1 8 um region of a JH spectrum for the star Hip031303 103 Thanks to the higher spectral resolution of these grisms compared to the AMICI prism see Figure 29 the absorption features of O2 and CO are somewhat better defined 8 3 3 Features depth versus air mass from the AMICI spectra This section shows the behavior of some selected absorption features with varying the air mass from the AMICI spectra of both telluric standards Table 13 shows the wavelength ranges in which the selected molecular features fall together with the corresponding percentages of the absorption
88. n of the spectrum When the spectrum of the object is taken in several different exposures the telluric features will not be identical in each spectrum Atmospheric lines may be modeled by Doppler or Lorentz profiles or with a combination of the two called a Voigt profile A Lorentz profile is used to characterize pressure broadening which is caused by collisions between molecules Pressure broadening is dominant in the lower atmosphere where pressures are high A Doppler profile is used to model molecular motions in the atmosphere which broaden the lines In the upper atmosphere where the pressure is much lower Doppler broadening becomes dominant and a Doppler profile is used to model the absorption lines Most observatories are at high altitudes to avoid looking through so much atmosphere At these altitudes 20 50 km a convolution of the Doppler and Lorentz profiles is used 4 a r l v v J wen v Vo E 2 fay 1 2 2 exp a dv Apa 2 V V a ap oo 87 where Q _ is the Doppler line width defined by V 62 a gt 2k T m p where c is the speed of light k is the Boltzmann s constant and m is the mass of the molecule Q isthe half width of the Lorentz line shape defined by a P T a P T a D k ae IN where P is the pressure and T is the temperature Q is the reference half width at To 273 K Po 1013 mbar n 1 2 for most gases Line widths are subject
89. ncrease over the normal ranges as shown in the following Green Orange Red Tn lt 80 K 80 lt Tn lt 100 K Tn gt 100 K Tamay lt 87 K 87 lt Taray lt 95 K Tamy gt 95 K Parray lt 0 000005 mbar 0 000005 lt Parray lt 0 0005 mbar PArray gt 0 0005 mbar Where Tn are the three temperature along the dewar Panay and Tarray are respectively the pressure and the temperatures inside the dewar It also allows to manage the connection with the telescope and have a look on the connection status through the ORACLE database The Telescope telemetry panel shows all the telescope telemetry parameters retrieved from the ORACLE database see Chapter 6 6 Instrument setups for the observations are defined in the exposure setup panel which include the Start acquisition and the FreeRun START Acquisition procedure allows to start the acquisition in MOSAIC or NINT mode The MOSAIC mode is available only when the telescope connection is active It s granted by setting the MOSAIC checkbutton in the status ON Setting the MOSAIC checkbutton in the status OFF the user performs NINT integrations The frames generated are saved into the archive Each exposure is characterized by the following parameters DIT is the on chip integration time or equivalently the time elapsed between the start and end read outs of the detector The value of DIT is given in seconds and can vary betwe
90. ng a new position the program reads the value X from the configuration file and computes the target value in step encodersas X X N In parallel to the step encoders information available from the controller the interface should keep track of the total number of steps moved by each motor since the last reset and update the 29 absolute step counter This is useful for instance when deciding if it is convenient to perform a reset during a passing through zero operation Its value should be displayed on the GUI The interface also updates for each movement an historical log file where minimal information of all the movements performed are stored It could be also useful to maintain update an historical step counter which is the sum of all the movements performed since the first time the interface has been used 47 5 2 2 Interface startup The interface sends first of all the initialization commands to the controllers Then reads the actual positions of the motors step encoders which are not explicitly excluded checks if motor 7 is in a critical position and recovers it if necessary Obviously the latter test must not be performed if motor 7 is explicitly excluded The controllers are mounted inside a single rack and connected to the same power supply The motor rack is normally kept powered and therefore the controllers keep memory of the step encoder positions even when the interface is not operative If the motor
91. ng down to below the noise level see Figure 7 Residual of persistency image 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Number of frames after saturated image Figure 7 Evolution of the level of persistency signal ghost after a strongly saturated frame The level of persistency has decreased about a factor of 3 after the new acquisition electronics FASTI NICS Contrary to standard CCD devices the bias of this detector is not uniform over the array but has a distinct horizontal pattern with pronounced maximum at rows Y 1 and Y 513 26 Moreover its level is not constant along a row but increases with X see for example Figure 8 0 200 400 600 B00 1000 Y pixels 400 600 B00 1000 X pixels Figure 8 NICS array quantum efficiency function of the wavelength 70 60 A i a aa be NICS array 50 40 cutoff 2 61um 30 20 F T 78K Area 3 423e 6 10F peak 1 970 um 9 34R SWIR1024 Cutoff 2 579 um Quantum Efficiency 0 8 1 2 6 2 0 2 4 1 Wavelength um Figure 9 A typical 60s dark frame with cuts along the two axes shows the NICS detector bias 27 The amplitude of the peaks and their slopes are not constant but strongly vary with the level of the signal In dark exposures the pattern is characterized by a prominent maximum with quite gentle slopes while at higher levels of illumination the peaks become progressively narrower This effect could produce annoying features when subtra
92. no mechanical blocks and has one home switch used to define the zero position A complete 360 turn requires about 100 000 motor steps the exact value is stored in the configuration file motors_config nics Motor 2 drives the focus slide which moves the array detector perpendicularly to the optical axis The step encoders corresponding to the optimal focus positions in the various observing modes are listed in the text file motor2_pos nics which can be edited for maintenance purposes The slide has two limit switches limiting the movement from 0 to about 9000 steps Besides these hardware limits the interface also foresees software limits which are defined in the configuration file motors_config nics and are used to avoid approaching the limit switches during normal operations A home switch is also present but in practice is not used 43 Motor 3 drives the pupil stop slide used to insert or remove a Lyot pupil stop The step encoders corresponding to the in and out positions are listed in the text file motor3_pos nics which can be edited for maintenance purposes The slide has two limit switches limiting the movement from 0 to about 33000 steps Besides these hardware limits the interface also foresees software limits which are defined in the configuration file motors_config nics and are used to avoid approaching the limit switches during normal operations A home switch is also present but in practice is not us
93. olution Later spectral types late G K and M have too many intrinsic features to be generally useful for telluric corrections The final step of the spectral reduction is the flux calibration if scientifically relevant Flux calibration of spectroscopic data in IR is not trivial since suitable spectrophotometric standards with tabulated spectroscopic fluxes in the wavelength range of interest are still rare and the available compilation have been mainly intended to support space based missions hence they are not optimized to calibrate ground based data Hence normally the most common procedure to roughly flux calibrate IR spectra is to use the broad band magnitudes of the target The filter band passes are then convolved with the spectrum to determine the appropriate scaling factor Alternatively one can use a standard stars which is measured through both the 2 slit and the slit used for the science target to set the absolute scale 8 3 Spectral analisys With the twofold goal of testing the new GUI of NICS and studying the atmospheric absorption at the Roque de los Muchachos La Palma Canary islands a number of spectroscopic observations of telluric standard stars have been performed during the TNG engineering time on 22 and 23 March 2009 For the tests I chose two O8 telluric standard stars Hip031567 06 36 25 89 06 04 59 50 J2000 0 V 6 87 and Hip031303 06 33 50 96 04 31 315 60 J2000 0 V 8 27 observed at
94. om persistence effects A typical observation with NICS consists of a mosaic of exposures taken with the telescope pointing at different positions coordinates in the sky Informations on the mosaic positions are saved in the header fits files where the images are stored see Chapter 5 1 5 Each exposure produces and writes on disks a number of frames characterized by the DIT NDIT parameters These parameters are saved in the header of the fits files where the images are stored The interface includes separate buttons to start stop the various acquisition modes foreseen by the system A running acquisition can always be stopped or aborted by the user as described in Chapter 5 1 The last acquired integration is always displayed using a Ds9 window integrated within the interface Besides the standard buttons available in the Ds9 window some of which are deactivated by the program the interface also includes a few buttons which can be used to modify the display and to perform a few analysis on the image The latter includes measurements of the FWHM of the stellar profile the possibility of selecting an object and move it to a certain position of the field by offsetting the telescope see Chapter 5 3 1 and the procedure to compute and execute the telescope offsets necessary for centering the object in the slit see Chapter 5 3 2 The Observing GUI is divided in three main windows e Acquisition window manages everything which concerns the
95. ommunicate with Lantronix but not in the best way The Lantronix output is provided by a RJ45 cable and the input of OEM is provided by a DB9 connector An ad hoc connector has been created to ensure a good communication between these two devices as schematized in Figure 25 76 RJ45 DBY 7RTS 4DTR 3 TXD 5 Ground 2 RXD 1 DCD 8 CTS Figure 25 Pin out of special connector used for connecting the Lantronix to the motors controller 6 3 OEM300 Compumotor The Compumotor OEM300 Original Equipment Manufacturer is an high performance motion control modules It is composed by a OEM Series Drivers and a Power Module and Motors The devices connection is described in Figure 26 The OEM300 PM Power Module provide power to Compumotor s OEM Series of microstepping drivers and servo It contains a dual range power supply which can operate at 120VAC or 240VAC at 50 60 Hz The voltage output of the OEM300 is fixed at 75VDC It can produce 2 7A continuous and 4 0A peak and provides power for drivers and motors The OEM PM is a compact device It occupies the space of two OEM drivers and mounts similarly to the drivers Its small footprint conserves space in equipment cabinets Several circuits in the OEM300 automatically provide protection for the PM and the equipment it powers OVER TEMPERATURE The PM monitors the temperature of its heat plate and will automatically shut down if the heat plate temperature exceeds 60 C SH
96. ormally updated every 24 hr Z is the label identifying NICS given session This counter is updated everytime a new frame is stored Its value is saved also in the telemetry database to make sure that image names are never duplicated Fits files also contain a lot of useful informations about the NICS state calibration lamps motors positions acquisition time etc an examples of fits file is shown in Appendix A The GUI manages the header fits using a specific Tcl library named itsTcl 2 2 This library is an extension to the script language Tcl Tk which uses the CFITSIO library and provides general users with a simple interface to read write FITS file 5 1 5 Mosaic offsets in the header fits During a mosaic the values of the offsets relative to the origin are also stored in the header file of the image in the keywords DEL_RA DEL_DEC DEL X DEL Y These values differ from that sent to the tracking because in that case they are always referred at the REL2LAST_AD mosaic see Chapter 5 2 3 for details while the offset values stored in the header fits are computed as follows Let 0 be the position angle of the frame m be the current position of the mosaic REL2SOURCE_AD DEL_RA X m DEL DEC Y m While the keywords DEL_X and DEL Y are not saved m m REL2LAST_AD DEL_RA gt X j DEL DEC gt Y j j 1 j 1 While the keywords DEL_X and DEL Y are not saved REL2SOURCE_XY DEL X X m DEL Y Y m dAR Scale X m c
97. ors detectors motors database and so on and the high level software users interaction windows providing a number of important tools for observations and implementing them in a Graphical User Interface The first and second Chapters are an introduction to infrared astronomy and astronomical software The third Chapter describes what is a GUI and the adopted software language and environment Tcl tk to develop the GUI for NICS The fourth Chapter describes the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and the details of all mechanical components of NICS in its imaging and spectroscopic modes motors detectors optics etc The fifth Chapter deals with the GUI for NICS describing the three windows to manage observations the tools implemented structures and functions The sixth Chapter introduces the protocol and main device communications Indeed a spectrometer as NICS is not a stand alone instrument but it is connected to many other devices temperature and pressure sensors calibration lamps etc The seventh Chapter deals with a warning system implemented for NICS as for the other instruments at TNG This software constantly monitors the temperature and pressure of the instruments and in case of unusual values sends an email and an SMS to the responsible to notify the problem The eighth Chapter describes a scientific application with the twofold goal of checking the correct functioning of the new GUI and of studying the atmospheric extinction at
98. os 8 Y m sin daDEC Scale X m sin Y m cos 8 42 REL2LAST_XY DEL X gt X j DEL Y DY Y j J 1 j l m m DEL_RA Scalex pes cos gt Y f sin J 1 j l m m DEL_DEC Scalex Xx sin aea j cos Where Scale is the pixel scale in arcsec pix which depends on the observing mode 5 2 Maintenance window The maintenance window is the interface which allows the control of the NICS motors see Figure 13 The NICS instrument includes 7 axis driven by stepper motors Each of the stepper motors is controlled by a OEM300 Power Module Chapter 6 3 which among other operations keeps track of all the movements performed steps and updates a step encoder value which in practice corresponds to the absolute position of the axis unless some mechanical problem occurs The controller holds the value of the step encoder only as long as it is powered 1 e the information is lost when the system is switched off Consequently a reset operation is needed whenever the system is turned off and on and it is also useful to check and correct for mechanical problems The 7 axis movements perform the following operations Motor 1 rotates the cameras wheel which houses 3 cameras LF SF PR and one close position The step encoders corresponding to the cameras positions are listed in the text file motorl_pos nics which can be edited for maintenance purposes The wheel can rotate freely
99. osition have been implemented 11 http hea www harvard edu RD xpa 55 SAGImage ds9 Saeg SAOImage Quicklook IE File Edit Frame Bin Zoom Scale Color Region WCS Analysis File Value wes Physical Image Framel Help x MY x y Zoom 1 000 Ang 0 000 Y La File Edit Frame Bin Zoom Scale Color Region wcs about open save img save fits save mpeg header source print page ezit File JPVZ0017 fts Object N1893_N10 Value wes mage X Y Frame 1 Zoom 1000 Angle 0 000 Mean 832 32 Stdev 37 73 zoom scale color 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 Figure 14 Standard Ds9 on the left side and modified Ds9 on the right side The magnifier has been enlarged to double the standard size and finally only few buttons have been leaved available The new Ds9 version for the GUI shows as default a cross talk corrected image The cross talk is an interference due to a spurious coupling between the electronic channels which simultaneously read the 4 sections of the array Every saturated object detected in a given quadrant produces negative ghost images in the other 3 ones see Figure 15 The green circles put in evidence the ghosts due to the cross talk 56 Figure 15 Comparison between a non crosstalk
100. otate to 295 degrees in both directions around the elevation axes of the telescope Each of those are equipped with an optical pointing system the auto guide and a Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor WFS for the optic active corrections performed on M1 through 78 actuators TNG Barbieri C 1989 with its instruments allows astronomers to investigate optical and Near Infrared NIR wavelengths In particular to study the NIR ranges TNG is equipped with NICS and in the near future will be equipped also with GIANO Oliva E 2006 18 Figure 2 The Telescopio Nazionale Galileo NICS is the TNG infrared 0 9 2 5 um multi mode instrument which is based on a HgCdTe Hawaii 1024x1024 array It was designed and built for the TNG by the infrared group at the Arcetri Observatory in Firenze Italy and placed in Nasmyth A as shown in the following image Baffa C 2001 19 Figure 3 NICS and the electronic devices mounted in Nasmyth A The instrument provides the following imaging and spectroscopic observing modes wide field imaging with a plate scale of 0 25 pixel and a total field as projected on the sky of 4 2 x4 2 field of view FOV Narrow band filters are available for photometry and in line imaging small field imaging with a plate scale of 0 13 pixel 2 1 x2 1 FOV for better sampling under excellent seeing conditions medium to low dispersion long slit 4 slit grism spectroscopy with a resolving power betw
101. parameters The scientific software is composed by packages of facilities tools dedicated to simplify the data reduction and the planning of the observations Usually includes a quick look software which ensures a wide displayer for the images visualization comprehending the possibility of making a field zoom creating a box around the object to do statistics estimating some important parameters like Full Width Half Maximum FWHM and relatives sigma in x and y the peak of the intensity the background value etc These criteria ensure a stable complete and user friendly GUI for these reasons the GUI for NICS at the TNG has been developed following this structure see Chapter 4 13 14 Chapter 3 Graphical User Interface A Graphical User Interface GUI is a type of user interface which allows people to interact with electronic devices like computers hand held devices household appliances and office equipment A GUI offers graphical icons and visual indicators as opposed to text based interfaces The actions are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements The term came into existence because the first interactive user interfaces to computers were not graphical they were text and keyboard oriented and usually consisted of commands you had to remember and computer responses that were infamously brief The command interface of the DOS Disk Operating System is an example of the typical user com
102. puter interface before GUI arrived An intermediate step in user interfaces between the command line interface and the GUI was the non graphical menu based interface which let you interact by using a mouse rather than by having to type in keyboard commands Elements of a GUI include such things as windows pull down menus buttons scroll bars iconic images wizards mouse pointer etc A major advantage of GUI is that they make computer operation more intuitive and thus easier to learn and use The GUI allows users to take full advantage of the powerful multitasking the ability for multiple programs and or multiple instances of single programs to run simultaneously capabilities of modern operating system by allowing such multiple programs and or instances to be displayed simultaneously The result is a large increase in the flexibility of computer and devices use with a consequent rise in user productivity The GUI has become much more than a mere convenience It has also become the standard in human devices interaction Moreover it has led to the development of new types of applications and entire new industries 15 3 1 Why a new NICS GUI The necessity of a new GUI for NICS is due to the hardware evolution The hardware evolution normally leads up to the necessity of a software update in order to fully exploit new technology A GUI to properly work needs to be based on libraries A library is a collection of subroutines or classes used to
103. rature_3 64 99 K Link Nics Internal Telemetry 19 http en wikipedia org wiki SMS 83 temperatures and pressures of NICS every 30 minutes reading them from ORACLE checking if the values are normal or not and sending via email and SMS the informations regarding the dewar status if the parameters exceed the normal values If the temperature or pressure reach a particular warning values described in Table 8 the Subject in the next email changes in Subject NICS Report Status CHECK ME and the color in the body changes from GREEN to YELLOW In the worst case it changes in Subject NICS Report Status WARNING and the value color in the body changes in RED Moreover to avoid the reading of obsolete values due for example to a defective cable contact or on a sensor malfunction an additional check on date is performed and a warning situation will be produced if the values are oldest than 30 min The column DELAY will report how old is the variable The values used for establishing the different kind of emails are Value Label 5 10 lt Pressure lt 5 10 YELLOW Pressure gt 5 10 RED 95 K lt TemperatureDetector lt amp YELLOW Temperature Detector gt 95 K RED 100 K lt Temperature1 lt 80 K YELLOW Temperature 1 gt 100 K RED 100 K lt Temperature2 lt 80 K YELLOW Temperature 2 gt 100 K RED 100 K lt Temperature 3 lt 80
104. re procedure that delays time in receive send communication packages and the socket parameters 74 There are two typical and correct answers depending by the motors After some tests I have subdivided the class of errors in tree main groups 1 Wrong command the received command was not the sent command In the example the sent command was 7IS request status for the motor number 7 but the OEM device received 7IW this command does not exist 16 03 07 12 06 12 SENT 7IS 06 12 6 bytes received 7IW lt CR gt lt LF gt lt LF gt Reply ERROR 7IW TIS 2 Answer overlapping frequently the OEM sent the answer packages with a considerable delay producing the following kind of errors 28 03 07 17 51 39 SENT 7IS 51 39 18 bytes received 7IS lt CR gt lt LF gt 11111111118 lt CR gt lt LF gt 11111111118 28 03 07 17 51 39 Input Status info motor 8 OK 28 03 07 17 51 39 SENT 7R 28 03 07 17 51 40 SENT 7IS 28 03 07 17 51 40 SENT 7R 51 40 19 bytes received 7R lt CR gt lt LF gt S lt CR gt lt LF gt 7IS lt CR gt lt LF gt lt LF gt 7R lt CR gt lt LF gt lt LF gt lt CR gt S7IS7R 3 Hexadecimal values the packages was frequently affected by some control character as M Z L O E H N corresponding to Carriage return Substitute Formfeed Shift in Enquiry Backspace and Shift out 75 Finally the solution of the overlap packages were found in some Lantronix port settings ETS8P Ver
105. repare movement to a positive target to open limit switch 7G Start movement will stop almost immediately 7MPA Set absolute moving mode 71S Check limit switch status must be 00 7 7PZ Reset step encoder 7OSA0 Define normal status of limit switch 7V2 Set normal velocity for the motor The reset of the slides motors 2 3 and wheel sector motor 7 are performed by moving the motor toward the negative limit switch by a number of steps equivalent to the maximum allowed range Under normal circumstances the movement will be prematurely stopped by the activation of the limit switch In case of mechanical problems with the axis e g stuck or electrical problems with the limit switch e g disconnected the limit switch would remain inactive even after movement is completed If this occurs the interface displays an error message Limit switch of motor n not found Please resend reset command and visually check if motor is moving If this does not work contact instrument responsible Using the command W3 the interface can monitor the reset process and compute the number of steps which the axis has moved since the reset command has been issued Once the command is terminated the interface can compare the total number of steps moved with the step encoder position prior to the reset command 5 2 6 Optimizing wheels movement passing through zero As described above motors 1 4 5 and 6 drive wheels which can rotate freel
106. rovides two connection pools one for the outside processes and another one for the different native Ancillary Processes AP in essence it works like a switch The BRG or BGE ancillary process accepts commands settings and telemetry calls from the outside via socket from the remote bridge server It accepts 3 WSS Command START STOP EXIT The START command opens a socket connection to the WSS bridge server while the STOP command closes the socket The EXIT command is called internally by WSS once the system is shutting down Once the connection to the WSS bridge server is active the AP will check every second if data arrive through the socket If something has arrived it will be parsed and the appropriate WSS function will be called It accepts 3 type of actions getting telemetry setting telemetry and sending commands 2 kinds of command are available one waits for completion and the other one returns without waiting If any problem happens with the socket an alarm will be shown on the screen where the AP is executing at the same time if there s sent any actions that doesn t exist inside the WSS system an alarm window will be shown The AP is written in C99 so it works under the HP UX workstation the logging information will be shown on the standard output and on a log file The WSS Bridge Server is a daemon process The WSS Bridge Server is an Event Driven Multitasking Server running some Components It has 2 Connection Poo
107. sion V3 6 4 000712 Uptime 0 41 35 Hardware Addr 00 xx xx xx xx xx Name Nodenum ETS _66AABE 0 Ident String ETS Terminal Server LAT Circuit Timer msec 80 Password Limit 3 Inactive Timer min 30 Console Port 1 Queue Limit 32 Retrans Limit 25 Keepalive Timer sec 30 Session Limit 4 Multicast Timer sec 30 Node Host Limits 50 none TCP IP Address 161 xxX xx xXxx Subnet Mask 255 255 255 0 Nameserver 161 xx xx xx Backup Nameserver Xxx Xx XX XXX TCP IP Gateway 161 xx xx x Backup Gateway undefined Domain Name tng iac es IP Time Daytime TCP Keepalives Enabled DHCP Server 161 72 52 38 Lease Time 0 08 51 Serial Delay msec 30 Network Buffering 2048 Prompt Local_ n P gt Groups 0 Characteristics Announce Broadcast Lock Incoming logins LAN Telnet No password Required The settings responsible in answer overlaps are evidenced in red color the IP time allows Lantronix to send a request package to the server for the date and time updated the Lease Time allows Lantronix to update every specific time the IP address when the DHCP protocol is enabled The overlap in answer occured when the Lantronix was busy for this kind of communications Disabling the lease time and setting static IP for the Lantronix the overlap packages problems are solved The problem of the hexadecimal values was due to a wrong pin connection cable Initially I used a serial cable for the Lantronix OEM communication This allowed to c
108. the Roque de Los Muchachos During some engineering time two telluric standard stars have been observed with the AMICI prisms and the JH and HK grisms Data have been analyzed and some information of the trend of atmospheric extinction as a function of the air mass have been obtained Finally the last Chapter contains a summary of the results and conclusions Chapter 1 Infrared observations Astronomy is a continuously evolving science Whereas since antiquity and until the 19 century the observations were made in the visible domain the celestial vault is now studied in the whole electromagnetic spectrum wavelengths Gamma rays X rays Ultraviolet UV Visible Infrared IR Millimeter and sub millimeter domain Radio etc Actually the Universe sends us light at all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum However most of this light does not reach us at ground level because the atmosphere blocks out many types of radiation while letting other types through see Figure 1 Fortunately for life on Earth our atmosphere blocks out harmful high energy radiation like X rays gamma rays and most of the ultraviolet rays It also blocks out most infrared radiation as well as very low energy radio waves On the other hand our atmosphere lets visible light most radio waves and small wavelength ranges of infrared IR light through allowing astronomers to study the Universe at these wavelengths Most of the IR light coming from the Uni
109. third one is used for the maintenance window In this way the user has at hand all the instruments in separated windows avoiding confusions due to their overlapping 5 1 Acquisition window NICS observational modes require selecting a given combination of the elements mounted on the 7 movable axis existing inside the cryostat For example large field imaging in K requires selecting the LF camera in the camera wheel the K filter in the filter wheel the open position in the grism slit and mask wheels the in position in the Lyot stop slide and a suitable position of the focusing slide To simplify the interface and avoid the user to work manually selecting the position of all the wheels a system of observing modes has been defined The user can choose among 4 different observing modes imaging IMA imaging polarimetry IMAPOL spectroscopy SPE and spectro polarimetry SPEPOL For each observing mode up to three parameters can be selected The interfaces handles the observing modes and relative parameters as groups of 2 3 or 4 keywords which summarize the requested setup as in the following examples IMA K LF G0 Imaging in K with LF objective IMA K LF G5 asabove but with a 5 mag gray filter IMAPOL J Imaging polarimetry in J SPE IJ 1 0 G0 Spectroscopy with IJ grism and 1 0 slit SPE IJ 1 0 G10 as above but with 10 mag gray filter SPEPOL HK 1 5 Spectropolarimetry with a HK grism and 1 5 slit
110. tion allowing the user to switch OFF 5 1 1 Defining and performing the telescope movements mosaic A typical IR observations consist of several frames taken with the telescope pointing at different positions The instructions on how the telescope should be moved are contained in the mosaic files They are simple text files extension txt mandatory structured as follows MODE X offset Y offset X offset2 Y offset2 X offset3 Y offset3 X offset4 Y offset X offset5 Y offsets 38 The header MODE is optional and specifies how the offsets must be interpreted Four modes are feasible REL2SOURCE_AD offsets are in arcsec The first column contains the RA offset and the second the Declination offsets The origin 0 0 is the position of the telescope before starting the mosaic Offsets are absolute with respect to this position This is the default mode A mosaic without an header will be interpreted and executed in this way REL2LAST_AD also in this case units are arcsec and the columns contain RA and Dec offsets but now they are relative to the previous mosaic position REL2SOURCE_XY offsets are in pixels for the LF camera and are defined along rows X and columns Y of the array They are absolute offsets with respect to the origin 0 0 i e the position of the telescope before starting the mosaic REL2LAST_XY the same as REL2SOURCE_XY except that the offsets are relative to the last mosaic position
111. tion model Aggregators lack direct access into the SS7 protocol which is the protocol where the SMS messages are exchanged SMS messages are delivered in the operator s SMS C but not the subscriber s handset the SMS C takes care of further handling of the message through the SS7 network Another type of SMS gateway provider is based on SS7 connectivity to route SMS messages also known as international termination model The advantage of this model is the ability to route data directly through SS7 which gives the provider total control and visibility of the complete path during the SMS routing This means SMS messages can be sent directly to and from recipients without having to go through the SMS Centers of other mobile operators Therefore it s possible to avoid delays and message losses offering full delivery guarantees of messages and optimized routing This model is particularly efficient when used in mission critical messaging and SMS used in corporate communications Message Service Centers communicate with the Public Land Mobile Network PLMN or PSTN via Interworking and Gateway MSCs Subscriber originated messages are transported from a handset to a Service Center and may be destined for mobile users subscribers on a fixed network or Value Added Service Providers VASPs also known as application terminated Subscriber terminated messages are transported from the Service Center to the destination handset and may originate
112. to changes due to varying wind speeds and pressure and temperature changes The central wavelength of the lines may also shift due to high winds as a result of the Doppler Effect Water lines are affected by altitude at which the observations are made air mass related to the secant of the zenith angle and humidity at the time of the observations Seasonal variations also occur All of these things must be taken into account before removal of the lines can take place Wood E 2003 8 2 Observation and telluric standards By observing from the ground strong OH sky lines in emissions are also present in the spectra of any astronomical source The standard procedure to remove them consists in observing a target along two slit positions A amp B through an ABBA cycle as sketched in Figure 28 Slit 20 arcsec Figure 28 Examples of a nodding on slit technique using a mosaic ABBA 88 The main steps for a spectrum reduction are as follows e Crosstalk correction A B and B A pairs Flat fielding Spectra co adding 1 D Extraction Telluric line correction e Flux calibration The first step in data reduction consists in the correction of the spectra for the crosstalk Then one computes A B B A pairs and applies a shift to match the median values in order to properly cancel out the OH sky lines In case of no dithering between different A B B A pairs a 2 D co adding of the various pairs can be appli
113. uisitions Users can introduce the observing setting can start a single multiple frame or mosaic acquisition monitor the motors status and all telemetry parameters manage the calibration lamps and the connection with the telescope obviously if there is no connection with the telescope the mosaic tools will be disabled This window is also equipped with a detailed log window act to provide an historical observations log and giving moreover the possibility to the users to manually add personal comments ML M5 16 M7 erotato r sition ee ETT Imaging Spectroscopy filter Js 1 17 1 33 Telescope telemetry IMA vw SPE Camera LF 0 25 piz STATUS STANDING eT RA 09 51 10 1 hh mm ss d ra DEC 28 41 46 gg pp ss ETOCS TC 63 00 deg NICS INSTRUMENT STATUS Obj_name Alphaleo Ti 75 61 K T_Array 84 94 K OFFSETS T2 71 66 K P_Array 3e 07 mbar Current mosaic pos O T3 Ea RA DEc Telescope Link SEE ORACLE Link JM Exposure Type v START Acquisition Figure 11 Acquisition window 35 The Motors Status display uses different color to show the status of each motor In position Moving Error Grey Not set Not in position NICS Instrument Status panel allows the users to have a quick look of the dewar status showing temperatures and pressure values The text color changes when the temperature pressure i
114. unication 6 1 Fasti Nbridge 6 2 Lantronix 6 2 1 Troubleshot in communication with the Lantronix device 3 6 3 OEM300 Compumotor 6 4 Lakeshore amp Balzers Temperature and pressure monitor devices 6 5 WSS Bridge middleware level software for the telescope tracking 6 6 ORACLE instrument variables archive 7 Notify NICS status via SMS and email for instrument responsible 7 1 Short Message Service SMS and Gateway SMS 8 GUI tests Atmospheric extinction 8 1 Telluric features 8 2 Observation and telluric standards 8 3 Spectral analysis 8 3 1 Relative flux versus air mass 8 3 2 Molecular absorption bands and features 8 3 3 Features depth versus air mass from the AMICI spectra Conclusions Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Introduction Astronomical instruments require suitable interfaces to be properly operated and maintained and for an optimized acquisition of astronomical data The latter aspect is crucial to optimize data reduction and maximize the scientific output from the acquired data The aim of this PhD thesis has been the design and development of an optimized graphical user interface GUI for the near infrared camera spectrometer NICS installed on the Nasmyth A of the TNG Telescopio Nazionale Galileo La Palma Canary Island The thesis work has been entirely undertaken at the TNG The thesis work deals with either the very low level control software for technical connections and communications with sens
115. ure and on the cleanness of the mirrors The background at shorter wavelengths is mainly due to airglow emission which may vary by up to about a magnitude on time scales of hours A list of typical values of zero points and background sky emission is shown in Table 4 Filter Zero point Background mag per 1 ADU sec mag sq arcsec K 21 8 12 5 13 0 K 21 9 13 1 13 6 H 22 3 13 4 14 7 J 22 1 15 0 16 0 Js 22 1 15 0 16 0 Imic 22 5 16 0 17 0 Kcont 18 8 12 5 13 0 Brgamma 18 8 13 0 13 5 H2 18 8 13 5 14 0 Fell 19 2 13 4 14 7 Hcont 19 1 13 6 14 9 SW 23 13 5 14 5 Table 4 Typical values of zero points and background sky emission 4 2 NICS in spectroscopic modes Long slit spectroscopic observations are performed by inserting a slit see Table 5 at the entrance focal plane and a disperser grism or prism in the collimated beam All spectroscopic modes make use of the LF camera with a scale of 0 25 pixel NICS slits Name Width Length 0 5 0 5 2 pix 4 0 75 0 75 3 pix 4 1 0 1 0 4 pix 4 1 5 1 5 6 pix 4 2 0 2 0 8 pix 4 Table 5 Slits available in NICS The instrument is equipped with one prism and a number of grism dispersers whose main characteristics are listed in the Zable 6 The grisms have a fairly constant dispersion 24 A pix throughout the spectrum and therefore their resolving power increases going towards t
116. ures There is also a set of commands that access operating system services to run other programs access the file system and use network sockets There are many Tcl extensions freely available on the Internet Most extensions include a C library that provides some new functionality and a Tcl interface to the library The script based approach to user interface programming has three benefits Development is fast because of the rapid turnaround there is no waiting for long compilations The Tcl commands provide a higher level interface than most standard C library user interface toolkits Simple user interfaces require just a handful of commands to define them The user interface can be factored out from the rest of your application The developer can concentrate on the implementation of the application core and then fairly painlessly works up a user interface The core set of Tk widgets is often sufficient for all your user interface needs However it is also possible to write custom Tk widgets in C and again there are many contributed Tk widgets available on the network Moreover Tcl Tk is largely used for developing specific astronomical tools and applications like DS9 SAOImage HEA Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Skycat ESO communication with astronomical archives and catalogs date Fy NASA fits viewer e RAC NASA radio astronomy controller BOB ESO manage Observation Blocks at VLT e COBR
117. verse is absorbed by water vapor and carbon dioxide in the Earth s atmosphere Only in a few narrow wavelength ranges infrared light can make it through at least partially to a ground based IR telescopes The best view of the IR universe from ground based telescopes is at infrared wavelengths which can pass through the Earth s atmosphere and at which the atmosphere is dim in the IR Ground based IR observatories are usually placed near the summit of high dry mountains to get the lowest content of water vapor and to stay well above the inversion layer Even so most IR wavelengths are completely absorbed by the atmosphere and never make it to the ground The IR windows where atmospheric transparency is good enough are mainly at wavelengths below 5 microns and around 10 micron 100 Atmospheric Opacity 1nm 10 nm 100nm 1um 10um 100um 1mm 1cm Wavelength 10 cm 1m 10m 100 m 1km Figure I Atmospheric opacity as function of electromagnetic wavelengths Infrared Windows in the Atmosphere Wavelength Band Sky Transparency Sky Brightness Range 1 1 1 4 um J high low at night 1 5 1 8 um H high very low 2 0 2 4 um K high very low 3 0 4 0 um L 3 0 3 5 um fair low 3 5 4 0 um high 4 6 5 0 um M low high 7 5 14 5 um N 8 9 um and 10 12 um fair very high others low 17 40um 17 25 um Q very low very high 28 40 um Z 330 370 um very low low IR is
118. window Eclipse is a library offering numerous services related to astronomical image processing FITS data access various image and cube loading methods binary image handling 15 www eso org shi data processing software eclipse eug eug eug ps gZ 68 and filtering including convolution and morphological filters 2 D cross correlation connected components cube and image arithmetic dead pixel detection and correction object detection data extraction flat fielding with robust fit image generation statistics photometry image space resampling image combination and cube stacking It also contains support for mathematical tools like random number generation FFT curve fitting matrices fast median computation and point pattern matching The main feature of this library is its ability to handle large amounts of input data up to 2GB in the current version regardless of the amount of memory and swap available on the local machine Another feature is the very high speed allowed by optimized C making it an ideal base tool for programming efficient number crunching applications The user only have to select by the click of mouse the position of the spectrum than the upper and lower limits Once the limits are set the extract_spec command of eclipse is invoked and the Gnuplot is called to print out a first look at the spectrum see Figure 23 Thu Feb 12 10 25AM Vincenzo Guido gt a QuickLook DS9 L Ja x Current image
119. x1024 HgCdTe Hawaii array which alike other devices used in various astronomical instruments has some peculiar characteristics Data acquisition and control system are based on the controller developed by the CCD Working Group of TNG suitably modified to adapt it to the architecture of infrared arrays Baffa C 2001 The controller is based on a set of Transputer processors which are responsible for handling data and sending commands and on a DSP Motorola 56001 which generates the synchronized clock pattern needed for accessing and reading the array multiplexer The analog signal read on each pixel of the four quadrants is buffered by four FET amplifiers located on the same board that hosts the detector After that stage there is a set of four 16 bit A D converters which convert the pixel intensity of the four quadrants in parallel The parallel outputs from the converters are translated to the Transputer serial protocol using a dedicated programmable logic chip from Xilinx The Transputer stage sends the digital data to a Linux PC by means of a fiber link which exploits the fast serial connection capability built into each Transputer The controller takes care of telemetry and stepper motors by means of dedicated RS 232 serial ports The array multiplexer has a stubborn attitude to remember whatever strong signal was recorded in the previous frame s This ghost image will also persist in the subsequent frames with intensity slowly fadi
120. xtensions Observatory Instrument name real_value tape_value BSCALE BZERO real_value tape_value BSCALE BZERO Each count is about 8 electrons exposure identifier exposure type FITS file name Incremental acquisition number UT date of data acquisition UT date when the file was written UT Time file was written UT Time exposure was started file written at CGG Julian date of acquisition minus 2450000 Program name Identifier of source Identifier of source Telescope Right ascension rad Telescope Declination rad Telescope Right ascension hours Telescope Declination deg current AR offset from source arcsec current DEC offset from source arcsec RA of catalog hours DEC of catalog deg Local Siderial Time Parallatic Angle rad equinox of telescope coordinates equinox of catalog coordinate Airmass when acquisition started starting azimuth rad starting elevation rad Position angle deg Derotator position rad Derotator offset angle rad reference X pixel reference Y pixel binning X axis binning Y axis X offset on detector Y offset on detector detector size X axis detector size Y axis 108 OBSMODE FILTER FLT_ID OBJECTIV PIXSCALE GRAY MOTORI MOTOR2 MOTOR3 MOTOR4 MOTORS MOTOR6 MOTOR7 TIME INT DIT COADDS NDIT MOSAIC BQI BQ2 BQ3
121. y The same position x encoder steps from controller can be therefore reached by moving the motor to the complementary positions N x or x N N being the number of steps corresponding to a complete 360 round The value of N is defined inside the configuration file motors_config nics which can be edited 52 by the super user for maintenance purposes It may therefore happen that a new setup position can be more effectively performed by moving the motor to the N x or x N complementary positions i e passing through the zero position In such a circumstance it is convenient to adopt the following procedures Please note that x y are encoder steps which are computed from the interface encoder values Case 1 the target position x is larger than the actual y position and x y gt gt N 2 The program moves to the negative x N position and updates the interface encoder X Case IR the target position x is larger than the actual y position and x y gt gt N 2_ The absolute step encoder i e the number of steps since the last reset is larger than 1 10 The program first sends a reset command and once terminated moves the motor to the negative X N _ position and updates the interface encoder X Case 2 the target position x is smaller than the actual y position and y x gt gt N 2 The program moves the motor to the x N position and updates the interface encoder X Case 2R the target position x

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