Software Design of CQUEAN

We are developing a CCD camera named CQUEAN (Camera for Quasars in Early Universe) to search for quasars at z > 7. CQUEAN has a 1024*1024 deep depletion CCD chip and will be attached to 2.1m Otto-Struve Telescope at McDonald Observatory, USA. Although commercial software for the CCD camera is provided by the vendor, we are going to develop our own software to control the other instruments as well, to carry out efficient observation. There are four major parts in our software: Instrument control part controls the camera and filter wheel to obtain imaging data. Quick look window is to display acquired imaging data for quick inspection. Telescope control part interfaces with Telescope Control System (TCS) to move the telescope and to get time or coordinate information. Finally, Observation scripting facility part carries out a series of short exposures in a batch. The whole software will be written in python on linux platform, using the instrument control software libraries provided by the vendors.