Opening Up the Telescope
A TA should open the shed on the roof; turn on the main
power for the telescope on the console in the slit room, if
it isn't already on. Now click the mouse on the "open/stow"
button in the main telescope control window. Another
subwindow will open showing the
status of the telescope and
its various parts. Check that the
- system power,
- shed,
- oil pumps,
- drive alarm,
- and panic stop
status
indicators in the "open/stow" window are green
(tower door and autoenable should be red). Click on the "open" button to
unstow the telescope. If you want the door of the
#2 mirror
in the tower to remain closed, (it should be open for
observing!) click the mouse on the little box indicated in
the window for this purpose before you unstow the telescope.
When the telescope is open (i.e. ready to slew to a star), a
comment will be added to the status box in the main window.
This should happen almost immediately after you click the
"open" button. The open/stow window may be closed by clicking
on the "close" button in the lower right corner (this
does NOT close the telescope!)
The telescope does not need to be in the stow position
to start up the tcp program or restart the tcp computer
(Iris). But every time the program or the computer is restarted
or a drive alarm trips, you MUST reinitialize the
telescope by clicking the mouse on the "open" button in the
"open/stow" window.
To find a bright star near the meridian, follow the
steps listed under "find a star near an approximate position"
in the section on using the star cache window. Now
set the "next" field in the main telescope control window to
active, and click the mouse on the "go there" button. The
telescope will slew to the bright star's coordinates. The
star should appear on the TV; if not, you may have to check
the eyepiece in the slit room. Center the star on the slit
with the handpaddle. (Note that the hand paddle will be set
to "set" speed after every preset.) Once a setup star is
centered on the slit, you can zero the telescope coordinates
by clicking on the
"z" button. The "z" button should be
used only when you are very confident of your coordinates.
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