Vol 23, No 11

Distributed Control Software for the Active Surface System of Tian-ma Radio Telescope

Dong Zhang, Rong-Bing Zhao, Zhen Yan, Wei-Hua Shang-Guan, Qian Ye, Zhi-Qiang Shen, Qing-Hui Liu, Jin-Qing Wang, Li Fu, Chu-Yuan Zhang et al.

Abstract

The Tian-ma Radio Telescope (TMRT) applies an Active Surface System (ASFS), which corrects for large-scale deformations due to gravity and thermal on the primary reflector. The centralized and automated management of the ASFS using software has become a challenge, for which we have developed the TMRT Active Surface System Control Software (TASCS). This paper describes the design and implementation of TASCS for device control, status monitoring, human-computer interaction, and data management functionalities. TASCS adopts the open-source Tango Controls framework and distributes middleware technology to realize real-time automated adjustment of the primary reflector through remote centralized control of a large number of actuators. At present, it has been successfully deployed on the TMRT and has played an important role in Event Horizon Telescope observations.

Keywords

Key words: Astronomical Instrumentation – Methods and Techniques – telescopes – instrumentation: high angular resolution – techniques: high angular resolution

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