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J. A. Eaton (Tennessee State University)
Tennessee State University has recently completed a 2-m automatic spectroscopic telescope for high-dispersion spectroscopy. The telescope has an alt-azimuth mount supported on oil pads. The dedicated fiber-coupled spectrograph has a basic resolution of roughly R=30,000 (echelle mode), with ancillary modes of about R=1000 and R=70,000 (echelle with slit). The telescope's program is dedicated to understanding the chromospheres and evolution of cool stars, particularly giants and supergiants.
To date (7 March), the telescope has proven its ability to acquire and track stars to at least 9th magnitude over a span of many months and has obtained a few spectra in automatic operation. Four computers running linux control the operation of this instrument and are linked by ethernet communications. We have developed a scheduling algorithm similar to the ATIS rules and incorporated it into a reliable simulator (as well as into the telescope controls), we have written a quality-control program to parse logfiles from the telescope and identify problems, and we are now beginning limited scientific operations.
You may find more information about this telescope at our web site, http://astro.tsuniv.edu.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #3
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.