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J.N. Sick (Queen Elizabeth High School)
This paper describes the development of a 32-cm f/5 Newtonian telescope intended for use by amateur astronomers in producing scientifically useful observations through high-accuracy computer control. The telescope is designed to achieve a 10-arcsecond pointing accuracy through the use of a star-pattern recognition algorithm. This star-pattern recognition pointing algorithm allows pointing errors such as tube flexure and mount misalignment to be intuitively identified and corrected without the need for calibrating positional encoders. This star-pattern recognition algorithm is based on comparing the shapes of visible patterns of six stars in any given field of view to a pre-compiled catalog of star-patterns that is generated by a software package called Star Field Simulator. A second-generation algorithm is presented in this paper that features an empirical image appearance prediction system, which adds photometric measurements to the star-pattern recognition. This allows the effects of unresolvable clusters of stars, and the presence of non-stellar objects to be included in the star-pattern recognition process through the prediction of an object's pixel brightness and point spread function. Testing with pointing camera images has shown that star appearance on a CCD can be predicted with high accuracy.
The telescope hardware features a unique fiberglass and metal composite construction technique for precision component placement. An innovative placement of the autoguiding camera at the Newtonian prime focus through an on-axis tracking platform is also featured. The telescope is controlled with real-time software, on a laptop computer, using modified Firewire video cameras to provide pointing and tracking data. To test the accuracy of the control algorithms and simulate the effects of errors from environmental and mechanical sources, a software application was written. Results from this and other tests have shown that this telescope can operate within the preset pointing and tracking objectives necessary for scientific utilization.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://homepage.mac.com/jonathansick/. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jonathansick@mac.com
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.