The hardware control system for WEAVE at the William Herschel Telescope

Delgado, J. M.; Menéndez Mendoza, Saúl; Burgal, J. A.; Herreros, J. M.; Picó, Sergio; Abrams, Don Carlos; Martin, Carlos; Cano, Diego; Gribbin, F. J.; Skvarč, Jure; Dee, Kevin; Lhome, Emilie; Dalton, Gavin; Middleton, Kevin; Trager, Scott; Aguerri, J. A. L.; Bonifacio, Piercarlo; Vallenari, Antonella; Carrasco, Esperanza
Referencia bibliográfica

Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 10700, id. 1070033 13 pp. (2018).

Fecha de publicación:
7
2018
Número de autores
19
Número de autores del IAC
4
Número de citas
2
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
When an alt-azimuth telescope is tracking at a specific field, it is necessary to use a de-rotator system to compensate the Earth's rotation of the field of view. In order, to keep the telescope tracking the field of view selected, the instrument will need to a rotation system for compensating it [1]. The new WEAVE [2] two degrees field of view requires a new field de-rotator on the top-end of the telescope. The rotator system has been designed with a direct drive motor which eliminates the need for mechanical transmission elements such as gearboxes, speed reducers, and worm gear drives. This design is a huge advantage for the system performance and lifetime because it eliminates undesirable characteristics such as long-time drift, elasticity, and backlash. The hardware control system has been developed with a Rockwell servo-drive and controller. The rotator has to be controlled by the high-level software which is also responsible for the telescope control. This paper summarizes the model developed for simulating and the software which will be used to accept the rotator system. A performance study is also carried out to test the CIP (Common Industrial Protocol) for communications between the high-level software and the rotator hardware.