AUTONOMOUS DOME FOR A ROBOTIC TELESCOPE

The Physical Research Laboratory operates a 50 cm robotic observatory at Mount Abu (Rajsthan, India). This Automated Telescope for Variability Studies (ATVS) makes use of the Remote Telescope System 2 (RTS2) for autonomous operations. The observatory uses a 3.5 m dome from Sirius Observatories. We have developed electronics using Arduino electronic circuit boards with home grown logic and software to control the dome operations. We are in the process of completing the drivers to link our Arduino based dome controller with RTS2. This document is a short description of the various phases of the development and their integration to achieve the required objective.