Wendelstein Observatory control software

Abstract

LMU München operates an astrophysical observatory on Mt. Wendelstein¹ which has been equipped with a modern 2m-class telescope^{2, 3} recently. The new Fraunhofer telescope has started science operations in autumn 2013 with a 64 Mpixel, 0:5 x 0:5 square degree FoV wide field camera,⁴ and will successively be equipped with a 3 channel optical/NIR camera⁵ and 2 fibre coupled spectrographs (IFU spectrograph VIRUSW⁶ already in operation at the 2.7 McDonald, Texas and an upgraded Echelle spectrograph FOCES^{7, 8}formerly operated at Calar Alto oberservatory, Spain). All instruments will be mounted simultaneously and can be activated within a minute. The observatory also operates a small 40cm telescope with a CCD-camera and a simple fibre coupled spectrograph for students lab and photometric monitoring as well as a large number of support equipment like a meteo station, allsky cameras, a multitude of webcams, in addition to a complex building control system environment. Here we describe the ongoing effort to build a centralised controlling interface for all hardware. This includes remote/robotic operation, visualisation via web browser technologies, and data processing and archiving.