The CCD Camera at Leuschner Observatory

Computer Connections for CCD and Telescope Control Sessions

The telescope, Thirty, and the visible CCD mounted to it, 'Apogee', are located at Leuschner observatory, and are directly controlled by the Leuschner PC fast, a.k.a., fast.berkeley.edu. You will operate the system remotely using the machine pulsar.ugastro, located in 705. From pulsar, you will ssh to fast for telescope control, and you will run a server program that displays the desktop of fast, for running the CCD control windows.

The CCD data taking software allows you to take exposures of various durations, to take calibration exposures such as dark and flat field frames, and will store your resulting images to disk. Your ssh connection to fast is used for issuing telescope commands, and for data transfer from fast to your account on the Sun workstations in 705.

Pulsar is only to be used for data acquisition, and you will need to sign up for a time slot. Please analyze your data on the Sun workstations in 705.

Remote Control Of The Apogee CCD from 705 Campbell Hall

• Log onto pulsar as user ay120, with the password you were given in class. If you need a terminal window, click on the 'shell in a screen' icon in the bottom toolbar.
• Set up the CCD control windows with the command setccdX from your terminal window, and a large grey screen with a smaller white terminal window should appear. IF you only have a large grey screen, use your right mouse button in the grey screen to call up a terminal. In the white terminal window, type startapogee to call up the GUI windows for CCD control. You may find the GUI is already displayed when you first run setccdX, which is fine.
• Begin cooling the CCD. In the Apogee control window, click on the Temperature menu button, and click Cooler On. This will begin cooling the ccd to the default, -30 C, or the lowest temperatureat which it can reach equilibrium (this is dependant on ambient temperature). It will take about 10 minutes or so to reach equilibrium. Under the main control menu, click on edit and then properties and Temperature to watch the temperature change over time.
• You should also click on ccd Geometry under the properties menu, and verify that numcols and numrows are what you want - OR, to set to the defaults, for a full frame, in the main APogee control window, choose observe and then resert full frame.
• Next, Click on Configure Data Directory in the main window. You should already be in /home/ay120. Under that directory, you should have a subdirectory in your name. Choose that directory. The path should now be shown in the window.

• Now, set your exposure time, in seconds. 0.02 seconds is the minumum exposure time. Set your number of frames, if you are taking a continuous set of pictures. Set your Exposure type; you likely want either 'Object' (shutter opens) or "Dark" (shutter stays closed).

• Enter the filename to save data to. Use a "%d" flag for a frame sequence. During a frame sequence, the box to the right of the filename will increment up to (your given # of frames + 1).

• Set up telescope control terminal - as ay120, ssh to Fast with the password, and issue the necessary 'tx' comands. See here for more tx command details.

• Don't hit observe just yet! Did you wait for the ccd temperature to reacha a stable temperature? Do you want to see the images after they are taken? Make sure the Automatic Display button is checked 'red'. Afraid of overwriting your files? Be sure Overwrite Files is not checked. Also.. did you open the mirror cover, if you need it open, and set the flip mirror position?

• In the terminal window, on Fast, if you need the mirror cover open, type tx mirror open and wait till the prompt returns. To set the flip mirror for the Apogee ccd, type tx flip home and then tx flip put=328.

• NOW, you can click Observe and take a picture! Be patient; after the exposure countdown, the full ccd array takes about 32 seconds to readout.

• Getting your images to a local machine is the next step. Your images reside in /home/ay120/{yournamehere} on the machine Fast, out at Leuschner. Please prepare a directory for telescope data, on ugastro, named /home/{yournamehere}/thirtydata to receive data from Fast. To copy one file from Fast to your account on ugastro: on Fast, type copyonehome {yournamehere} and you will prompted for your password on ugastro. To copy your entire directory on Fast at /home/ay120/{yournamehere}, type copyallhome {yournamehere} and again you will be prompted for your password on ugastro. Your files will be copied to /home/{yournamehere}/thirtydata, to be accessible on any of the 705 machines (except for the one you used to take data!)

• NOTE: Please try to remove old data you do not need on Fast, once you have copied it to ugastro, to conserve disk space!!!

• Questions? direct them to me, bresloff@astron.berkeley.edu

  Last updated on September 16 2003 by C Bresloff