SOFIA is an airborne, gyroscopically stabilized 2.5m infrared telescope, mounted to a spherical bearing. Unlike its predecessors, SOFIA will work in absolute coordinates, despite its continually changing position and attitude. In order to manage this, SOFIA must relate equatorial and telescope coordinates using a combination of avionics data and star identification, manage field rotation and track sky images. We describe the algorithms and systems required to acquire and maintain the equatorial reference frame, relate it to tracking imagers and the science instrument, set up the oscillating secondary mirror, and aggregate pointings into relocatable nods and dithers.
@article{arxiv.1001.0197,
title = {Pointing the SOFIA Telescope},
author = {Michael A. K. Gross and John J. Rasmussen and Elizabeth M. Moore},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.0197},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures. To appear in Proc. ADASS XIX (Sapporo, Japan, 2009)