Abstract Details
| Name: Rushikesh Deogaonkar Affiliation: Vishwakarma Institute of Technology,Pune Conference ID: ASI2019_423 Title : Automation in Telescope Authors and Co-Authors : Rushikesh Vinod Deogaonkar Abstract Type : Poster Abstract Category : Instrumentation and Techniques Abstract : Accurate pointing and precise tracking of the telescope towards the desired celestial objects is necessary when it comes to observational astronomy. This project is about automation in a telescope. The aim of this project is to build a low-cost control system which can be built by any student or professionals which is easy to implement. Also, as this project is going to be open source so it can be developed further by individuals according to their needs. The setup is expected to take the coordinates of the celestial objects from the user or some predefined objects from the database are to be selected and given as input. The control system will then move the telescope to the desired location. Also, the telescope has a facility to track the object. The current testing of the control system’s hardware and software is being done on a 4-inch dobsonian mount. The rotation takes place along the altitude and azimuth axis. Arduino is used as the microcontroller which will carry out the necessary calculations and operations. Arduino was selected as the microcontroller considering robustness, low cost, ease of implementation and availability of plenty of help online. The RA-DEC values given as input will be converted to Alt-Az coordinates, and this moves the telescope to the required position. Stepper motor with torque of 19.8 KgCm and step angle of 1.8 degree is used. For the feedback, optical encoders having resolution of 1024 PPR is used. The gear reduction ratio is 60:1,so the least count of the telescope is 0.03 degrees. As the size of the telescope increases, it becomes difficult to move the telescope manually. A well sophisticated GOTO telescope is not affordable to anyone. Further this system can have a good user-friendly GUI and also can be incorporated with a virtual sky simulator (eg. Stellarium) |