control_engineering

OAJ Control System

There are many ways to solve the challenging problem of making a high performance robotic observatory from scratch. The OAJ control system has been designed under a global point of view including not only astronomical subsystems but also infrastructure and other facilities.

Three main factors have been considered in the design of a global control system for the robotic OAJ: quality, reliability and efficiency. We propose a control integrated architecture design in order to improve operation processes, minimize resources and obtain high cost reduction maintaining quality requirements. This way, OAJ strategy in control design is prepared to achieve maximum quality efficiency for the observatory processes and operations.

OAJ Control Integrated Architecture

Figure 1. OAJ Control Integrated Architecture.

The OAJ subsystems considered for the control integrated architecture are the two wide-field telescopes (T250 and T80) and their instrumentation, active optics subsystems, facilities for sky quality monitoring (seeing, extinction, sky background, sky brightness, clouds distribution, meteorological station), domes and several infrastructure facilities such as water supply, glycol water, water treatment plant, air conditioning, compressed air, LN2 plant, illumination, surveillance, access control, fire suppression, electrical generators, electrical distribution, electrical consumption, communication network, Uninterruptible Power Supply and two main control rooms, one at OAJ and other remotely located in Teruel at 40km from the observatory, connected through a microwave radio-link.

OAJ Integrated Systems

Figure 2. OAJ Integrated Systems.