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Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems VII
ASP Conference Series, Vol. 145, 1998
R. Albrecht, R. N. Hook and H. A. Bushouse, e
Ö Copyright 1998 Astronomical Society of the Pacific. All rights reserved.
ds.
Integrating the ZGSC and PPM at the Galileo Telescope
for On­line Control of Instrumentation
F. Pasian, P. Marcucci, M. Pucillo and C. Vuerli
Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, 34131 Trieste, Italy
Email: pasian@ts.astro.it
O. Yu. Malkov and O. M. Smirnov
Institute of Astronomy (INASAN), Moskow 109017, Russia
S. Monai 1 , P. Conconi and E. Molinari
Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, 22055 Merate, Italy
Abstract. The usage of catalogs is extremely important for e#ciently
observing with up­to­date instrumentation. In the work described in this
paper, GSC sources are cross­correlated with entries in the PPM catalog,
and used as an input to the control software of the Galileo Telescope
(TNG). A graphical user interface (GUI) based on IDL has also been
built. The system will be used during observing time at the TNG.
1. Background
The Guide Star Catalog (GSC) was created by STScI to support HST observa­
tions. With positions and magnitudes for about 20 million objects, it is by far
the biggest all­sky catalog to date. The GSC is a unique tool for many astro­
nomical applications, however, its utility is somewhat hampered by its format.
The two CD­ROMs make for relatively slow access times. Maintaining the cat­
alog on­line requires either two dedicated CD­ROM drives (or a jukebox), or
over 1GB of hard disk space. Furthermore, the actual data in the catalog is not
easily accessible. The sky is divided into regions of a complex organization, with
the data for each region stored in a separate FITS table. The coordinates are
given in one standard system (J2000.0).
The GSC sources can be cross­correlated with entries in a number of astro­
metric catalogs. One of the best of them is a family of PPM catalogs, namely: the
Catalog of Positions and Proper Motions; the Catalog of Positions and Proper
Motions ­ South; the Bright Stars Supplement to the PPM and PPM South
Catalog, Revised Edition; and the 90000 Stars Supplement to the PPM Star
Catalog (Roeser & Bastian, 1988; Roeser & Bastian, 1993; Roeser et al. 1993).
These four PPM catalogs give J2000 positions and proper motions for 468861
stars altogether. Their main purpose was to provide a convenient, dense, and
1 and Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Italy
433

434 Pasian et al.
accurate net of astrometric reference stars that represents the IAU coordinate
system on the sky.
The Galileo telescope (TNG) is currently in its testing phase. Some e#orts
are currently being directed towards using specific GSC2 fields for commissioning
purposes; this paper deals instead with the development of tools to be used at
the telescope when observing with TNG instruments, and in particular with the
Low Resolution Spectrograph, also known as DOLORES (Device Optimized for
LOw RESolution).
2. GUIDARES and the ZGSC
To help solve the problem of GSC data retrieval, the Guide Star Catalog Data
Retrieval Software, or GUIDARES (Malkov & Smirnov 1995), has been created.
This is a user­friendly program which lets one easily produce text samplings of
the catalog and sky maps in Aito# or celestial projections, given a rectangular or
circular region in any standard coordinate system. Originally developed for the
PC, the low­level GSC access routines of GUIDARES have since been ported to
a variety of Unixes, and equipped with a GUI developed using IDL widgets.
We have created a compressed version of the GSC, called ZGSC (Smirnov
& Malkov 1997a). By using a binary format and an adaptive compression algo­
rithm, the GSC was losslessly compressed by a factor of 6, giving the ZGSC a
total size of about 200 Mb. This makes it entirely practical to keep the ZGSC
on­line on a hard disk and gain a dramatic improvement in access times.
An extensive software package, derived from the GUIDARES project, was
developed to work with the ZGSC. This includes a suite of IDL routines that
retrieve data from the ZGSC into IDL arrays, and supporting C libraries for
on­the­fly decompression of the catalog. The software facilitates retrieval of
circular regions, specified by center and size. Four coordinate systems are sup­
ported: equatorial and ecliptic (any equinox), galactic and supergalactic. The
software also allows retrieval of objects of a particular type and/or in a particular
magnitude range.
3. The XSKYMAP application
The XSKYMAP software is an IDL widget application for retrieval, visualiza­
tion and hard copy of ZGSC samplings. The applications of the XSKYMAP are
finder charts, GSC studies (Malkov & Smirnov 1997; Smirnov & Malkov 1997b),
etc. XSKYMAP is fully integrated with ZGSC and provides easy access to all
retrieval options of the ZGSC. It also allows for mouse­based catalog feedback
(i.e., objects may be selected with the mouse, directly on the map, to view their
corresponding full catalog entries). The software provides mouse operations for
zoom in/out and recenter region, click­and­drag for computing angular sepa­
ration and positional angles, and tracking of mouse coordinates with dynamic
display of sky coordinates and separation/positional angle relative to center of
area. The user can interactively change the map legend (i.e., symbol and color
used for each type of object), and selectively display and label particular types
of objects.

On­line Control of Instrumentation at the Galileo Telescope 435
XSKYMAP uses a custom map projection routine, one which allows plotting
of truly rectangular areas even in polar regions, and supports arbitrary rotation
of the map relative to North on the sky. An instrument's field­of­view box
may also be plotted on the map. XSKYMAP can also display a 2D image
(e.g., directly from the instrument), and overplot the catalog map on top. Hard
copy in PostScript format is also provided, both in map­only mode, and in
image+map overplot mode. Another useful feature of XSKYMAP is built­in
coordinate system conversion. For example, the user can start exploring the
catalogs using the galactic system, and once the necessary sky area is obtained,
the coordinates may be switched to a di#erent system (e.g., the native system
of the telescope), while preserving the same area on the screen. The necessary
map rotation (to compensate for orientation of di#erent systems relative to each
other) is computed and introduced automatically.
Recently, XSKYMAP has been extended with a module to access the PPM
catalog. For this purpose the PPM catalogs were reformatted to have the same
file structure as the GSC. It is now possible to execute a query on both catalogs
(ZGSC and PPM) simultaneously, and view the objects plotted on the same
field. Objects from the PPM are plotted using a di#erent symbol or color;
their complete catalog entries can also be accessed by clicking the mouse over
them. Thus, GSC's depth of field can be combined with PPM's extremely
high astrometric accuracy, all within one plot. This development has led to
a restructuring of the XSKYMAP software. Data access will now be handled
by generic modules with a well­defined interface. Thus it will be possible to
easily add capabilities for access to other catalogs in addition to the ZGSC and
PPM. To this end, XSKYMAP is being overhauled to take advantage of the new
object­oriented features of IDL 5.0.
4. Integrating with the Galileo instrument software
The integration of a new instrument with Galileo is a rather smooth e#ort,
since WSS, the Workstation Software System (Balestra et al. 1991), takes care
of all communications with subsystems, information and data management and
handling, and its tabular structure simplifies any addition of new configurations.
Newer versions of WSS support complete integration with IDL (Balestra 1997),
thus guaranteeing the possibility of binding XSKYMAP with the control of TNG
instruments. The Observation Software (OS) for the instrument, if properly
integrated in WSS, is guaranteed access to all facilities related to TNG control
and information handling.
This work is dedicated to the Observation Software for DOLORES, the
TNG low resolution spectrograph and imager. The ZGSC and PPM catalogs
will be accessed by means of the GUIDARES and XSKYMAP for a number of
di#erent purposes including:
. choice of field to be observed;
. assistance to the observer, both in ``blind'' mode (direct access to the
catalog) and in ``guided'' mode (comparison with observational data taken
in imaging mode);
. setup of the MOS systems:

436 Pasian et al.
-- positioning of the slitlets;
-- commands to be sent to the punching machine.
The compactness of the compressed versions of the catalogs and the e#ciency
of the access software allows the system to be installed within WSS and to
perform operations while observing, with no need for local or external network
connections to databases or data centers.
Access to ZGSC and PPM is supported by tools and procedures integrated
with IDL and WSS. Therefore the system, although built specifically for DO­
LORES, can be used with instrument­specific modifications for any other TNG
instrument controlled by WSS.
The system is planned to be available within the Archives At the Telescope
(Pasian 1996), so as to guarantee a reference version on the mountain. In the
case of problems, the system can be downlinked from the Archive Server to the
Instrument Workstation and installed by means of an automatic procedure at
WSS re­start time.
The system is not a general­purpose one, and is dedicated to on­line use dur­
ing observing time. It is planned to also make it available within the DOLORES
Observation Support Software, and will be distributable via the network. At the
level of observation preparation, however, network connections with other facil­
ities and/or data centers (e.g., VizieR at the CDS) may be also advisable and
supported by the Galileo Observatory.
Acknowledgments. Two of the authors (OYM and OMS) visited the Os­
servatorio Astronomico di Trieste supported by the INTAS grant no. 94­4069
and by a TNG contract; SM was supported by a grant of the Osservatorio As­
tronomico di Brera­Merate.
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