R. Lee Hawkins
Whitin Obs.
David Berger
Colgate Univ.
Ian Hoffman
Colgate Univ.
WinTICS-24 Version 2.0 is a telescope control system interface and observing assistant written in Visual Basic for MS Windows 3.1/95/NT. It provides the ability to control a telescope and up to 3 other instruments via the serial ports on an IBM-PC compatible computer, all from one consistent user interface. In addition to telescope control, WinTICS contains an observing logbook, trouble log (which can automatically email its entries to a responsible person), lunar phase display, object database (which allows the observer to type in the name of an object and automatically slew to it), a time of minimum calculator for eclipsing binary stars, an OLE link to Netscape for viewing current weather maps and forecasts, and an interface to the Guide CD-ROM for bringing up finder charts of the current telescope coordinates. Currently WinTICS supports control of DFM telescopes, but is easily adaptable to other telescopes and instrumentation. PFITS (PMIS FITS Image Taking Scripts) is a suite of PMIS scripts which, in addition to acting as a front-end to PMIS to simplify image taking, reads an output file from WinTICS containing telescope and filter wheel position info, and constructs the appropriate FITS keywords for each image.