News from the 30-m telescope

New 30-m Telescope Manual

Version 2.0 of The 30m Telescope Manual is now available at the IRAM Granada web pages. Many things have changed at the 30m telescope since the first version has been released in October 1995. Among the most noticeable changes for observers were certainly the new receiver cabin, larger and more sensitive bolometers, the introduction of a spectral-line on-the-fly observing mode, better communication infrastructure, more and faster computers, and remote observing from Grenoble - to name only a few. All these improvements and changes made an update necessary.

Version 2.0 of The 30m Manual can be downloaded in postscript format (about 100 pages, 2.9 Mbyte) from the IRAM Granada web pages. An HTML version (for online reading) is planned.

Wolfgang Wild

Receiver tunings

The new generation of receivers turned out to be very reliable and easy to tune. Tuning is done automatically or by the operator; only very little time is lost due to receiver problems. Therefore we have decided that there will be no receiver engineer on Pico Veleta during the weekends anymore. An engineer will, however, be on standby during weekend days, and, in case of problems, can be at the telescope within 2 hours. Observers who need the presence of a receiver engineer should contact Santiago Navarro (email: navarro@iram.es) or Dave John (email: john@iram.es) well in advance.

Visitors' office in Granada

To make the stay at our Granada offices more productive, we now have a visitor's office equipped with two LINUX computers, a printer and a telephone in our Granada office building. There will be documentation about the telescope, our computers and the available software. The computers can be used as X-terminals, and also for Telnet, FTP, to use LaTeX and read e-mail. You will find it upstairs behind the library.

Rainer Mauersberger

New control system for the 30-m Telescope

In the near future many hardware components of the control system for the 30-m telescope will be replaced by more modern equipment. This implies corresponding changes in the software. We have compiled a preliminary list of desirable features for a new system, which will complement the many successful features currently available.

Our goals are to:

1.

improve current observing modes;

2.

design and implement new observing modes;

3.

optimize for mm-wavelength observations with a large single-dish telescope; and

4.

prepare the system for future hardware.

We foresee a `core' of features, that will be essential parts of the new system, including:

1.

continuous data taking, e.g. fast on-the-fly observations;

2.

remote observing, service observing, and flexibility of observing and scheduling;

3.

observations with focal-plane arrays, both bolometers and heterodyne receivers; and

4.

observing modes using the full parameter space of the `wobbler'.

At this time (April 1999) we are discussing several questions in detail in order to specify detailed requirements for the future system, and to study possible solutions.

All users of the 30-m are invited to comment on our plans.

Details and regular updates can be found on the WWW pages for this project:
http://www.iram.es/FutureControl30M/Main.html

Hans Ungerechts, email: ungerechts@iram.es