Abstract

Control System for an Amateur Telescope (CSAT) is a Telescope Control System (TCS) designed to operate amateur telescopes. It is based on the ALMA Common Software (ACS), taking advantages of its Component/Component model, generic control design and CORBA encapsulation. CSAT is the first step towards a generic Telescope Control System, the gTCS, a framework capable to control any telescope, regardless its mount. Because of this, CSAT was designed with such a generality for amateur telescopes. Different deployments have been done for CSAT, testing its performance on various different telescope models. In this work we present CSAT, its main components, and our experiences on the usage of it on our telescope at the UTFSM, the Observatorio UC in Santiago, and the Observatorio Cerro Armazones, in the North of Chile.