Implementation of the software systems for the SkyMapper automated survey telescope

Abstract

This paper describes the software systems implemented for the wide-field, automated survey telescope, SkyMapper. The telescope is expected to operate completely unmanned and in an environment where failures will remain unattended for several days. Failure analysis was undertaken and the control system extended to cope with subsystem failures, protecting vulnerable detectors and electronics from damage. The data acquisition and control software acquires and stores 512 MB of image data every twenty seconds. As a consequence of the short duty cycle, the preparation of the hardware subsystems for the successive images is undertaken in parallel with the imager readout. A science data pipeline will catalogue objects in the images to produce the Southern Sky Survey.