US National Solar Observatory: Design of telescope control system for Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST)

The client
The US National Solar Observatory is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astrononomy, Inc. (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The Advanced Solar Telescope (ATST) represents a collaboration of 22 institutions, reflecting a broad segment of the solar physics community in the United States.

Background
With its unprecedented 4m aperture, integrated adaptive optics, low scatterd light, infrared coverage, and state-of-the-art post focus instrumentation, the ATST will be the largest and most capable solar telescope in the world.

What we are doing
An Observatory Sciences / Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory team is designing the telescope control system. The work covers both the control and pointing of the main telescope plus the coordination of all the telescope subsystems.

A partnership approach
We are working in a joint team with Rutherford Appleton Laboratory on this project.

A ‘first’ for Observatory Sciences / Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
The order for this work, awarded to our joint team, was the first ATST project contract to be awarded outside the United States.

Technical

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