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Instrumentation News (1Jun92)
(from CTIO, NOAO Newsletter No. 30, 1 June 1992)

As has been the case for some time now, our work has been concentrated
on a few major projects. We are now starting to see "the light at the
end of the tunnel" for some of them, as indicated below.

4-m seeing improvements. This is a multi-part project, described in
detail in Newsletter No. 28. The 4-m oil cooler has been completed,
installed and is now in operation. Right now it cools the oil at full
capacity; future work involves setting the oil temperature to some
optimal value (to be determined) relative to various temperature sensor
readings.  Preparations for the move of the console room continue, with
the move itself scheduled for the August bright run.  Work on the dome
ventilation project has begun; the first stage involves installation of
the sliding doors around the outside of the dome at the catwalk level.
Once this is completed, the ventilation openings will be cut in the
dome skin. In this way the work can continue during the southern winter
without risk.

Arcon. Work on this project is described briefly in an accompanying article.

CCD TV cameras. As indicated in the accompanying article, production
will soon begin on the last four units for CTIO. We are starting work,
at a low level, on a follow-on project to use the camera's PC to handle
the telescope. At present, the cameras are used for guiding by feeding
the video output from the PC into the Leaky Guider units; incorporation
of the guiding function in the PC should give better guiding and reduce
the number of controls the night assistant (or the astronomer) has to
manipulate.

Large format PFCCD and PFC/ADC.  Commissioning tests for both of these
instruments are scheduled for the end of the calendar year. Watch the
next Newsletter for information on the status of these projects, in
particular whether they will be officially "available" during the first
semester of 1993.

1.5-m TCS. This is the second of the new telescope control systems on
Tololo; the first, for the 4-m telescope, has been in use for about two
years.  Progress on final commissioning has been slow because we were
initially reluctant to set aside a large block of time for the purpose,
and the commissioning work has thus gone on during afternoons and
shared engineering nights. As this has proven inefficient, a block of
time will be set aside in late August or early September, after which
the new system will be put into service. In the event that tests prior
to then show it to be working flawlessly, we will recycle the time and
put the TCS into service.

The TCS will be very similar in its operation to the 4-m; from the
user's point of view its advantages will be greater speed in setting,
greater reliability, plus the ability to work with object catalogs. The
initial implementation will not provide control of the offset guider
(GAM); this will eventually be done, thus providing the same kind of
flexibility as currently exists on the 4-m telescope.

Implementation of the small telescope TCSs will occur as resources
permit once the 1.5-m TCS is finished. The next telescope after the
1.5-m will be the 1.0- m (Yale) telescope, followed by the 0.9-m
telescope.

Jay Elias

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