The Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) is a 6-meter diameter telescope with a surface accuracy of 10 microns, operating at submillimeter to millimeter wavelengths. It will be located at 5600 meters elevation on Cerro Chajnantor in the Atacama desert of northern Chile overlooking the ALMA site. Its novel optical “crossed-Dragone” design will deliver a high-throughput, wide field-of-view telescope capable of mapping the sky very rapidly and efficiently. The telescope can host up to three instruments, with the heterodyne array “CHAI” and the direct-detection camera “Prime-Cam” as first-generation instruments. The often harsh environmental conditions at the telescope site require that FYST be operated remotely, either from the base station near San Pedro de Atacama or from the scientist’s home institutions in the US, Canada and Germany. Automated observations will therefore be the dominant observation mode. FYST’s Observatory Control System (OCS) gives instrument teams the responsibility to control observations. We believe that this model is a good fit for FYST because the observatory will operate exclusively in campaign mode. Furthermore, instrument teams have significant investments in software they want to preserve. The OCS adopts a micro-service design using off-theshelf components as far as possible to minimize development effort. We will present the OCS design and the selection of off-the-shelf components used.
This paper discusses the usage of LoRa wireless transmission protocol in support of CCAT-prime telescope operations in northern Chile. A LoRa based sensor network allows for low data rate sensors to be deployed with up to 1 year battery life with a broadcast range of multiple kilometers. In this paper we present the basics of a LoRa network and demonstrate its application to a vehicle tracking system as part of an observatory sensor network. We show results from a recent test campaign and demonstrate transmission ranges up to 40km. We discuss plans for future expansion and how such a system aids the remote operation of an observatory.
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