Controlling the Discovery Channel Telescope Using LabVIEW

The Challenge:

Design and implement control software for large optical telescopes and integrate with networked distributed control systems.

The Solution:

Use NI LabVIEW software to create a system that controls the telescope's fixed control hardware.

Lowell Observatory and Observatory Sciences Ltd. are working with Discovery Communications to develop the 4.2-meter Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT), which will be the fifth largest telescope in the U.S. It is a powerful tool for many aspects of modern astrophysics, from solar system studies to fundamental work in celestial, galactic and extragalactic astronomy.

We use LabVIEW for large-scale physical control applications and as the primary software development tool for DCT control systems, using LabVIEW shared variables to communicate between distributed subsystems. We use NI CompactRIO systems for telescope mirror intelligence and dome control. In addition, we use NI Compact FieldPoint controllers in environmental control systems.

We chose to use LabVIEW to implement the telescope control system because it is an integrated development environment that can easily integrate Internet facilities with remote data providers, and it has also demonstrated rapid prototyping capabilities and improved productivity in similar projects in the past.

We are building control systems for multiple telescopes that have some common features as well as some features and subsystems that are unique to each telescope. We have designed a flexible software architecture based on LabVIEW to support the development of large-scale distributed systems. This provides a set of common features that can greatly reduce the time required to develop custom software for each telescope.

Common software is used for reuse between different telescopes and is portable between LabVIEW running on Linux and Windows operating systems. We have developed applications for controlling large distributed control systems using LabVIEW and created a common software architecture that has been deployed in several large software applications for controlling specialized optical telescopes. The DCT is the first system we have completed using this architecture. We used LabVIEW for rapid prototyping and fast integration with external application libraries and built-in debugging tools.