User's Guide to the Nickel Spectrograph

Table of Contents

Introduction
Hardware Overview
Aperture Wheel
Filter Wheel
Collimator
Grisms
CCD Stage
Flexure
Detector Characteristics
Software Overview
CCD User Interface
Motor Controller
Nickelfocus
Observing Hints
Calibration Lamp Spectra
Checklists
Data Archive
Mt. Hamilton Homepage

Software Overview

Observing with the Nickel Spectrograph is controlled through a suite of programs that operate in concert, but are addressed through several GUI's, separated by function as follows:

Summary of Observing Software for the Nickel Telescope and Spectrograph
ProgramFunctionIconCommand Line
Data-Taker Control CCD array and set exposure parameters
(starting the data-taker also starts the Motor Controller).		 
nickel_spect_client
Motor Controller Filter wheel, aperture wheel, collimator, CCD stage, and grism slide control.
(This program starts when data-taking program is started;
this program also controls motors for Nickel Direct Camera).		 
nickel_inst_gui
POCO Telescope pointing and control 
poco_fe
Auxilliary Telescope Hardware Dome shutter, windscreen, and flatfield lamp control. 
naux_fe
Guider Acquisition/guide TV and autoguider control. 
nickel_guider_client
Coords Read observer starlists and display starcharts 
coords

From the observer's perspective, all software runs on noir.ucolick.org. This manual focuses on data-taking and instrument control. Telescope and autoguider operation, and other ancillary software are described in the users' guides for the Nickel 1-m Telescope and Lick Autoguider.

Each software component can be started from its icon on the noir toolbar, as shown above, or by typing its command line argument. Observers may not need all the software listed, but in general will require most.

Support Astronomers (sa@ucolick.org)
Last modified: Tue Jul 17 18:50:14 PDT 2012