My primary responsiblility for instrumentation at PARI is to oversee the development of computer control of the PARI Observatories. The PARI Observatories include two 26-m radio telescopes, a 4.6-m radio telescope, and several optical telescopes.

On this web page I discuss the RADIO TELESCOPES and the OPTICAL TELESCOPES

The RADIO TELESCOPES

The 26 m radio telescopes have receivers for 1420 MHz, 4.8 GHz, 6.7 GHz, and 327 MHz.

The spectrometers used with the receivers are built by CyberSpectra, but come with DOS software. So, I began an upgrade of the receiver software to Visual Basic 6 in February 2001 and had a prototype ready by summer 2001.  Also, the telescope software is DOS and we needed Windows control to link the spectrometer control to telescope control and provide  communication between the two. In the Summer 2001, PARI hired  a summer student intern (Jim Castelaz) to finish the work and write the code for the radio telescope interface. The telescope control (TeleControl) and the receiver software (SpecCon) communicate with each other so that the spectrometer records telescope status and position information, while the telescope knows the status of the data taking (e.g. how long is left in an integration).  Both pieces of software work together to provide the 26-m radio telescopes with mapping capability. The observer tells the telescope where to start mapping, where to stop, and the interval from step to step in the raster scan process.  We use this software for a methanol maser monitoring program, and for peaking up on pulsars for the Pulsar Timing project headed by Dr. David Moffett at Furmnan University

The 4.6 m radio telescope is another story.  It was original designed with circa 1980’s analog electronics and came with no software!  So, we interfaced the analog electronics which  consists of a dozen relays to a digital I/O card and a synchro card for the synchro position readouts. I wrote the initial VB 6 software, but the real work was done again by Jim Castelaz. He wrote the first generation Visual Basic 6 software controling the 4.6 m radio telescope, and the spectrometer connected to that telescope.  A new JAVA Applet version of the form is the second generation used today.  It was developed by Dr. Joe Daugherty, a professor in Astronomy and Computer Science at UNC-Asheville. Dr. Daugherty isnow working ont he third generation version.

The OPTICAL TELESCOPES

The Main Campus at PARI shown in the lower frame above has a unique feature - an East-West Ridge with ideal contours to minimize seeing. This ridge at PARI has become known as the Optical Ridge.  The upper frame shows a closeup of the Optical Ridge and the locations of current and future telescopes.  The Galactic Survey telescope was a project being conducted by a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill.  The weather station and OVIEW contribute to seeing and transparency measurements.  The 1.8 m and the 1.1 m telescopes are in the planning stages. PARI has acquired the figured mirrors for the large telescopes.   The 1.1 m telescope will be a prime focus camera.  It is still in definition stage, with use as a supernova search, a near earth object search, and gamma ray afterglow photometry system are under consideration. Closer to earth is the possibility to turn the 1.8 m mirror into a LIDAR instrument for atmospheric research.

OVIEW is a suite of telescopes that includes a 5-inch telescope monitoring V<2 bright stars 24 hours a day for seeing and transparency (the Bright Star Telescope), a solar lunar/lunar telescope, 3 small telescopes looking line-of-sight along the horizon towards distance transmission towers, and a telescope monitoring Polaris.  Not shown is a 0.30 m telescope located near OVIEW and used for variable star research.  A 0.35 m telescope will soon be set on a Paramount ME equatorial mount in another observatory and used by PARI and Furman University.