LAMOST CCD camera-control system based on RTS2

TL;DR

This paper presents the development and implementation of an RTS2-based automated camera-control system for LAMOST's 32 CCD cameras, enhancing stability and automation in large telescope operations.

Contribution

It introduces the first application of RTS2 to a large telescope, designing a virtualized control layer for robust management of multiple CCDs.

Findings

System successfully controls all 32 CCD cameras.

System meets automation and stability requirements.

First RTS2 application to a large telescope.

Abstract

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) is the largest existing spectroscopic survey telescope, having 32 scientific charge-coupled-device (CCD) cameras for receiving spectra. Stability and automation of the camera-control software are essential, but cannot be provided by the existing system. The Remote Telescope System 2nd Version (RTS2) is an open-source and automatic observatory-control system. However, all previous RTS2 applications have concerned small telescopes. This paper focuses on implementation of an RTS2-based camera-control system for the 32 CCDs of LAMOST. A virtual camera module inherited from the RTS2 camera module is built as a device component working on the RTS2 framework. To improve the controllability and robustness, a virtualized layer is designed using the master-slave software paradigm, and the virtual camera module is mapped to the 32 real cameras of LAMOST. The new system is deployed in the actual environment and experimentally tested. Finally, multiple observations are conducted using this new RTS2-framework-based control system. The new camera-control system is found to satisfy the requirements for LAMOST automatic camera control. This is the first time that RTS2 has been applied to a large telescope, and provides a referential solution for full RTS2 introduction to the LAMOST observatory control system.