7   Slit-Viewing & Autoguiding Systems

7.1) Introduction

7.2) Andor Cameras for Slit Viewing

        7.3) Autoguiding and Acquisition at the MDM Telescopes

7.1  Introduction   

All telescope mountings are imperfect, so to maintain accurate pointing for any but the briefest exposures it is necessary to monitor the telescope's drift, generate a correction signal, and feed this back into the telescope's fine motion controls. The autoguider accomplishes this using Finger Lakes Instrumentation (FLI) CCDs and the Maxim DL software package resident on a Windows PC.  This chapter assumes that you are familiar with the operation of the Multiple Instrument System (MIS Section 6).

Slit-Viewing is performed using science grade CCDs at both telescopes (excepting CCDS which utilizes its own SBIG camera currently). 

John Thorstensen (Dartmouth) has done a comprehensive job of detailing both the slit-viewing and guider systems already.  Instead of rehashing this information in a less adequate way, refer to the links below for his manuals:

Instrument rotation is currently not utilized on the 1.3m telescope.  If rotation is desired, cabled wraps will need to be rerouted, so staff must be notified in advance.