Retrofitting the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope for Remote Operations
Abstract
In 2007, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) undertook a project to enable the remote control of the observatory at the summit of Mauna Kea from a control room in the Headquarters building in Waimea. Instead of having two people operating the telescope and performing the observations from the summit, the goal of this project was to allow one operator to remotely control the observatory and perform observations for the night. CFHT has now transitioned to routine remote operation of the observatory. This required the development of tools for remote assessment, monitoring, notification, and control of observatory systems that are necessary for observing and other critical observatory functions. Many changes were needed to allow remote operations of an observatory that was designed without that intent. This paper will describe how systems engineering concepts have shaped the design of the project structure and execution, as well as some of the resulting changes to observatory systems that were implemented.
- Publication:
-
Telescopes from Afar
- Pub Date:
- March 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011tfa..confE...8G
- Keywords:
-
- automation;
- remote operations;
- remote observations;
- systems engineering