AutoCAT: The CAT Pointing Correction Program
AutoCAT calculates the conventional and telescope-specific pointing corrections. The pointing calculations correct for precession, nutation, and refraction, then adds CAT-specific corrections based on an empirically derived pointing model.
AutoCAT is run from the user account on catpc in the CAT control room. AutoCAT can be started in either of two ways:
Click AutoCat in left mouse button pulldown menu.
or
Type autocat & in any xterm window.
The main AutoCAT window is comprised of four sections.
The top section displays the Pacific Standard, Universal, and Sidereal times (PST, UT, and ST respectively). It also contains the Quit button to exit the program.
The second section is where the user can enter the RA, Dec, and Epoch of the target. Press the Precess button to calculate the CAT Corrected position of the target. The Starlist... button allows the user to load in a list of targets for easy access during the night.
The third section displays the Hour Angle, RA, and Dec of the target after precession, refraction and pointing corrections have been applied. These are the coordinates the user should move the CAT telescope to for observations.
The final section lists any error messages or warnings.
Push the Starlist... button to get the Starlist window. This window contains a entry box for the starlist file name. The starlist file can be located in any directory but should be in the same format as the 3-m telescope standard starlist file format. The file name must include the full path to the file. Push the Open File button to load the starlist file. The Close button closes the Starlist window.
Once the starlist file is loaded, the user should see a list of the targets. To select a target click the checkbox next to its name. This will load the target's RA, Dec, and Epoch into the main AutoCAT window. Push the Precess button to calculate the CAT corrected position.
To help find an object, you can sort the starlist by Object Name, RA, or Dec by clicking the corresponding button. Note that Dec sorting is currently a little odd in that the negative declinations are listed after the positive declinations.
You may also search the starlist object names. All possible matches will be put at the top of the list for you to choose from. If there is only one possible match, it will automatically be selected and loaded into the AutoCAT main window for precession. If there are no possible matches in the starlist, "No matches found" message will appear in the main AutoCAT window. Searching is not case sensitive, but may fail for certain special characters at the beginning of (and sometimes anywhere in) the search string. (e.g. +, -, ., \, &, etc.).
For Example, the above image shows the CAT corrected position for the selected target on the starlist. The messages show some of the typical messages output by the AutoCAT program.