An observation control system for radio telescopes based on Python and C++languages  

作　　者：Yuxiang Huang Longfei Hao Kejia Lee Wei Dai Min Wang Zhixuan Li Yonghua Xu Bojun Wang Faxin Shen 

机构地区：[1]Yunnan Observatories,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Kunming 650216,China [2]University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100049,China [3]Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics,Peking University,Beijing 100871,China [4]Computer Technology Application Key Lab of Yunnan Province,Kunming University of Science and Technology Kunming 650050,China [5]National Astronomical Observatories,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100101,China

出　　处：《Astronomical Techniques and Instruments》2024年第6期307-315,共9页天文技术与仪器（英文）

基　　金：funded by the National SKA Program of China(2020SKA0120100);the Special Project of Foreign Science and Technology Cooperation of Yunnan Provincial Science and Technology Department(202003AD150010);the National Natural Science Foundation of China(12073076,12173087,12041303 and 12063003),the Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Light of West China Program),the CAS-MPG LEGACY Project and the Max-Planck Partner Group.

摘　　要：An observation control system is the foundation to support automatic observations by any radio telescope.Traditional observation control systems are usually coded using a compiled language,which is of higher efficiency compared with interpreted languages.Indeed,observation control systems are usually programmed using the C or C++languages.However,the high execution efficiency of C/C++is at the cost of a long development cycle,which is not only time consuming but also requires considerable skills for the developers.The development of computer hardware performance,as well as the optimization of the just-in-time compiler for new interpreted languages such as Python,provides a good balance between execution and development efficiency.In this paper,we introduce the observation control system developed for the Kunming 40-meter radio telescope run by Yunnan Observatories,Chinese Academy of Sciences.The system is developed mainly with the Python language,and we have optimized computationally intensive components with C++.We demonstrate that it is possible to achieve the required functionality and control precision with such a Python-C++programming paradigm.The performance of the control system is also assessed in this paper,demonstrating that satisfactory pointing accuracy and user experience can be attained.

关 键 词：Observation control system Radio telescopes Ease of development 

分 类 号：P111.44[天文地球—天文学] TP312.1[自动化与计算机技术—计算机软件与理论]