The system software development for Prime Focus Spectrogrsph on Subaru Telescope

TL;DR

This paper presents the conceptual design of the control and observation preparation software for the Prime Focus Spectrograph on the Subaru Telescope, enabling efficient multi-object astronomical observations.

Contribution

It introduces the integrated system design for software managing fiber positioning, telescope pointing, and data archiving for the PFS instrument.

Findings

Design of software architecture for PFS control system

Efficient fiber allocation algorithms for target observation

Integration of control software with database systems

Abstract

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is a wide field multi-fiber spectrograph using the prime focus of the Subaru telescope, which is capable of observing up to 2400 astronomical objects simultaneously. The instrument control software will manage the observation procedure communicateing with subsystems such as the fiber positioner "COBRA", the metrology camera system, and the spectrograph and camera systems. Before an exposure starts, the instrument control system needs to access to a database where target lists provided by observers are stored in advance, and accurately position fibers onto astronomical targets as requested therein. This fiber positioning will be carried out interacting with the metrology system which measures the fiber positions. In parallel, the control system can issue a command to point the telescope to the target position and to rotate the instrument rotator. Finally the telescope pointing and the rotator angle will be checked by imaging bright stars and checking their positions on the auto-guide and acquisition cameras. After the exposure finishes, the data are collected from the detector systems and are finalized as FITS files to archive with necessary information. The observation preparation software is required, given target lists and a sequence of observation, to find optimal fiber allocations with maximizing the number of guide stars. To carry out these operations efficiently, the control system will be integrated seamlessly with a database system which will store information necessary for observation execution such as fiber configurations. In this article, the conceptual system design of the observation preparation software and the instrument control software will be presented.