Title:
MIDI: controlling a two 8-m telescope Michelson interferometer for the thermal infrared
Authors:
Hippler, Stefan; Jaffe, Walter; Mathar, Richard; Storz, Clemens; Wagner, Karl; Cotton, William D.; Perrin, Guy; Feldt, Markus
Affiliation:
AA(Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astronomie) AB(Univ. of Leiden) AC(Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astronomie) AF(Univ. of Leiden) AG(Observatoire de Paris) AH(Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astronomie)
Journal:
Proc. SPIE Vol. 4006, p. 92-98, Interferometry in Optical Astronomy, Pierre J. Lena; Andreas Quirrenbach; Eds. (SPIE Homepage)
Publication Date:
07/2000
Origin:
SPIE
Abstract Copyright:
(c) 2000 SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Bibliographic Code:
2000SPIE.4006...92H

Abstract

MIDI is a two channel mid-infrared interferometric instrument developed for the Very Large Telescopes (VLT) Interferometer (VLTI). A control system with real-time capabilities integrates the various VLTI subsystems. Based on the VLTI control architecture and its interferometric extension, the VLTI control system, the MIDI control system will use synchronized VME computers running Tornado to control time critical subsystems such as delay lines and detector control electronics. Standard Unix workstations run high-level coordinating, monitoring, and data pre-processing tasks as well as graphical user interfaces. We describe the MIDI control architecture, the data flow and storage concept, and the self fringe tracking option. Furthermore we introduce a software package currently under development to simulate observations with MIDI.