12 Meter Optical Pointing

1. Turn on Camera: Right switch up, Left switch down.
2. Start 'coptical' on the optical pc, if it's not already running: Open an xterm and cd to /home/corona/cactus/optical/pc and type './coptical'. You should see a hh:mm:ss> prompt, which indicates that the coptical program is ready for commands from the exec.
3. Select the 'optical' receiver from within rambo.
4. Go to pointing control screen and press (GO +BEAM) button, insure that the +/-beams are at the 0:00 0:00 and -3:00 -3:00 setting. And the +Beam is green on status display.
5. Start xoptical , from the Xcontrol panel . Press (Star Finder) button. In the plot window, see below that shows all the star positions, click on the star closest to 180 az, 40 el or lower. Once a yellow circle is on the star press the (Seek Selected) button to send it to the exec. the telescope should begin slewing to the star.
6. Press the channel 4 button on the Video Switcher for Output A. This will feed the video from the optical camera to the monitor on top of the operators console. Both led's for that channel should be on. If not Press the button again. It's a toggle.
7. If not already, open the (Optical Pointing) Window in rambo. Once the telescope is on the source and you can see it clearly, press the (Set Optical Pointing Origin) button. The optical-pc will overlay a set of cross-hairs, on the 'Xoptical' xwindow, where it thinks the star is located. If it misses, press the (Set Optical Pointing Origin) button again. If it can not find the star, perhaps its to dim, go back to step
   5 and find a brighter one.
8. Create a fresh sdd data file in rambo. You should have initials set to 'sys' first.
9. Once the origin has been set, you may begin the actual optical pointing run by pressing the (Start Optical Pointing Run) button. You can now (Quit) the starfinder program.
10. Watch dataserv for the results. It will be obvious if the stars are found, i.e. large Gaussian point somewhere near the center of the plot. If you can see the stars on the video monitor, and the optical-pc seams to be placing the 'box' over the star, then it should find it. If the box is missing the stars, you need to abort and go back to step 4-8, i.e, try setting the origin again. If you don't see any stars at all, and the sky is clear, maybe its time to call Thomas Folkers.
11. After the optical run is finished, you can start another. DO NOT reset  the origin before starting another. After you are done doing optical pointing, reselect your radio receiver, make another data file and correct the pointing.
12. IMPORTANT!!! Turn off camera, Right switch DOWN, Left Switch UP, after pointing and before it becomes light out. This camera is very sensitive, and can be damaged by intense light.
13. You are done...  

Any problems, call.

Thomas Folkers
297-5250 home
909-1113 cell