Permanent telescope parameters

Data for all the telescopes at an observatory can be stored in a single MIDAS table file, called (by default) esotel.tbl. A standard path needs to be established for this file. Observers who use different observatories may need to keep files for two or more observatories.

Each observatory file should contain a C*72 descriptor OBSERVATORY that contains the name of the observatory, preferably as it is given in [6]. If effect, this descriptor takes the place of the standard descriptor IDENT in *.bdf files.

Each individual focus of each telescope has a single row in this table. The duplication of most information for the telescope itself is not a problem, as this will be a short file in any case. Each column described below should be present in the table, although some columns do not apply to some individual instruments, and will contain null entries.

Each column label can be a standard FITS keyword, if an appropriate one is available. The following sections describe the columns of the table in detail (cf. Table ).

• Column label: TELESCOP
• Column label: DIAM
• Column label: LON
• Column label: LAT
• Column label: HEIGHT
• Column label: TUBETYPE
• Column label: TUBEDIAM
• Column label: TUBELEN
• Column label: DOMETYPE
• Column label: DOMEDIAM
• Column label: SLITWID