MOONS fibre positioner control and path planning software

Steven Beard; Bart Willemse; Stephen Watson; David Atkinson; Pablo Gutierrez Cheetham; Paolo Franzetti; Johannes Nix

doi:10.1117/12.2629239

29 August 2022 MOONS fibre positioner control and path planning software

Steven Beard, Bart Willemse, Stephen Watson, David Atkinson, Pablo Gutierrez Cheetham, Paolo Franzetti, Johannes Nix

Proceedings Volume 12189, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy VII; 121890V (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2629239
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2022, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Abstract

The MOONS multi-object spectrograph relies on an array of 1000 fibre positioners to acquire targets in the focal plane. The fibre positioners have a larger overlap than similar instruments because MOONS can observe in the infrared. The large overlap gives MOONS the ability to acquire close pairs of object and sky targets, but it makes moving positioners to their targets without a collision even more technically challenging. We describe how the MOONS fibre positioner control system overcomes those challenges with custom electronics to manage the synchronisation between the positioners, a collision protection system, and a grid driver software system which manages the control of the fibre positioners. We also describe our experiments with different path planning algorithms and present the latest results from MOONS testing.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Steven Beard, Bart Willemse, Stephen Watson, David Atkinson, Pablo Gutierrez Cheetham, Paolo Franzetti, and Johannes Nix "MOONS fibre positioner control and path planning software", Proc. SPIE 12189, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy VII, 121890V (29 August 2022); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2629239

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