Antonio Longinotti
ESO
Charge Coupled Devices (CCD) are currently by far the most widely used
type of detectors in Astronomy. It is foreseen to have in
operation at the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) on mount Paranal in
Chile
about 40 technical
CCD cameras for auto-guiding, field viewing and wavefront sensing, and
probably more than 10
scientific CCD cameras for instruments working in the optical spectral
range.
The CCD Software Package is the very first VLT application built and
tested on top of the VLT Common Software. It provides services
(e.g. execute an exposure and store the acquired image data in a FITS
file) to higher level packages, such as the control software of a VLT
instrument (science CCDs) or the telescope auto-guiding software
(technical CCDs). It provides also a stand-alone mode, with Graphical
User Interface (GUI), whereby the CCD camera is treated as a simple
instrument and is directly driven from the CCD control panel.
After a brief introduction to the VLT Control Software architecture,
the VLT CCD Detectors Control
Software and its functionality will be presented, with particular
attention to the capabilities for on-line image data analysis: