As mentioned above, OPERATE is the
interface to the telescope control system. The system is actually
based on two personal computers but one of them, running a
program called BTCS , is merely a "black
box" from the user's point of view. For a long time it did not even
have a screen, and only half of the keys on the keyboard worked.
This didn't matter, however, because all you have to do from this
PC is to start up the control software, using a script we called 'bb'
(because 'b' happened to be one of the keys that worked!)
The other PC is the one that actually runs OPERATE . From
this PC you can control the motion of the telescope (i.e. pointing
and tracking), the Lynxx CCD camera and the autoguider camera. All
this can be done at the same time, and you can even do some simple
image reductions too. We recommend that you see the
BAO Telescope control system page.