WHY TO CHOOSE PROJECTSOFT

Our specialization is the refurbishment of the current astronomical telescopes, domes, spectrographs and other astronomical devices, needed control, robotization and automation. Short delivery times, usually in weeks, including turn-key deliveries. Usage of the solutions and components used in industrial enviroment significantly prolongs the lifetime of the devices. We solved one of the most burning questions, which is spare parts. They are now available to anybody and anywhere, regardless of the original supplier.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

The very first realized projects was the robotization of a miniature observatory of amateur astronomer Mr.Bardon (currently the director of ProjectSoft HK), followed by the controlling of 0,5m telescope. These first „astronomical swallows“ has gradually brought ProjectSoft to winning competition and successful delivery of the Czech Academy of Sciences Ondřejov Observatory 2m telescope control upgrade.

This was later followed with the other new applications, including 2m telescope of Russian Federation Terskol Observatory, 2m telescope of Bulgaria Rozhen Observatory, solar spectrograph of Ondřejov Observatory and 1m telescope of ESA´s Optical ground station on Tenerife Island in Spain.

OUR APLICATIONS IN ASTRONOMY

Delivering robotics control of the astronomical telescopes is a complicated task which requires the knowledge and skills in many fields – mathematics, process control theory, astronomy, advanced programming skills, to name just a few. At the beginning we greatly benefited from our long term experiences in automation of different fields. The control tasks in the industrial applications are much closer to the control tasks of the telescopes then it might look.

As the main volume of ProjectSoft projects is realized in the industrial applications it does not depend on the astronomical projects. So we can devote enough care, time and attention to them. The key feature of its solution is the usage of standard industry components and programmable controllers. This unique combination significantly increases the safety and reliability of the astronomical instruments.

Three of five telescopes, which were made by Carl Zeiss, were robotized by our firm

ROBOTIZATION OF THE BIGGEST CZECH TELESCOPE

Control System, Remote Control

To ensure long service life of the system and long term availability of spare parts a standard industrial control system is used for the telescope control. In order to use it a special set of mathematical libraries had to be created. The fastest processor of given automaton series was selected to achieve the required speed of computation. The entire control program is running directly in the automaton. It means that all computations are done in one processor without necessity of remote communication - thus the maximum reliability of the control system is ensured. User computers are only used for visualization and remote control. The telescope can be controlled even without user computer , through standard TCP/IP protocol, so full remote control of the telescope is possible.

Regulation, Accuracy

Conflicting requirements in the telescope control had to be met. On the one hand - as smooth as possible and as slow as possible control of the hourly movement, and on the other hand - as fast as possible movement to new coordinates. Those requirements are achieved with several coupled and switched regulators that mutually switch their modes. The main regulator controls the telescope position with the accuracy of 0.1 arc second! This represents angular size of a football field situated on the Moon, as viewed from the Earth.

Telescope Positioning on Coordinates

The system includes a correction model that can correct the telescope mechanical inaccuracy. The model is embedded into control automation. Thus the control system can achieve much better accuracy of positioning on new coordinates as well as much better retention of the observed object in the reticle. With the model the pointing accuracy of a 2m telescope was improved from approximately 300 arc seconds to 6 arc seconds! Thanks to the sophisticated regulation the object acquisition times were significantly shortened. So the night time can be utilized much more effectively. The control system includes equations for the refraction, correction of the aberration, nutation, precession and others apparent position transformations.

Autoguider

The system can benefit from the very precise autoguiding through external camera.

Safety

Another important benefit of the refurbishment is increase of the telescope movements safety. All limit states are controlled by 2 to 3 sensors and by an independent program. This is more than sufficient for safe remote control of the telescope movements

Dome Movement

The system includes state of the art control of dome and slit motors . It ramps up and down motor speeds, so the dome operates much smoother. The ramping eliminated transmission of shocks from dome movement to telescope pier.

WHY INDUSTRY PLC (programmable logic controller)?

Thanks to our 20 years experience in the industrial automation we could without any fears use for this demanding task – the control of the astronomical telescopes – the same control system that was delivered by ProjectSoft for control of one of the most famous Czech breweries – Budweiser České Budějovice – production.. The solution brings many benefits:

• - long lifetime of the used components
• - wide range of the available cards: inputs, outputs, counters, etc.
• - service and spare parts are easily available worldwide

In spite of higher computing power and bigger flexibility of the personal computers use of the standard programmable controller is more suitablebecause:

• - complete control program is executed directly in the controller. All computations are realized in one processor, eliminating need for complex network communication. This ensures top reliability of the control.
• - programmable controller is considerably more reliable than classical computer
• - programmable controller runs fast real-time operating system

Personal computers are used only for visualization and the remote control. The telescope can be controlled without PC though standard TCP/IP protocol. Placing the critical part of the control to the programmable controller and the auxiliary part to the personal computer creates new conception model of the robotized telescope.

Within our projects we can deliver also CCD cameras SBIG (Official Representative)
Within our projects we can deliver also SW of Diffraction Limited (Official Representative)