Tcl/Tk in Astronomy: an Informal and Incomplete Survey

So no one really knows how much Tcl/Tk code is supporting the international world of astronomy and astrophysics. For theoretical computation and pipeline data reduction, we know that languages like Python and IDL are popular. Where Tcl and Tk show up is where you would expect: in the production of complicated, customized user interfaces of every kind: interfaces to images, instruments, telescopes, log files, and similar operational systems.

To collect the pictures shown here I simply hunted around the Web a little, wrote to a few colleagues personally, and of course most easily found applications written at my own institution :-) I suspect that this is a very small subset of the real body of Tcl/Tk code in the service of astronomy worldwide.

These screenshots run the gamut from infrastructure (the building and debugging of CCD controllers) to data gathering (instrument and telescope control) to data reduction (both pipeline and interactive). If you are curious about the projects casually mentioned here, follow the URLs and find out who's looking at the sky and why.

DTAKE configuration explorer

The configuration files for the DTAKE data taking code used on Mt Hamilton for older Lick instruments is like a maze of twisty little files all including each other. This GUI was written to help the software engineer untangle the maze and configure the software correctly. This is Tcl/Tk in a search/parse tool with tree visualization. Part of the Detector Lab effort headed by Richard Stover

CCD Controller Design

There are lots of clocks and signals on our custom CCD controller boards which "tune" the boards for various specific devices. Configuring all these clocks is a complicated problem, and Richard has written this handy GUI which allows the developer to see and edit the timing and related signals for a controller. This is Tcl/Tk in a numeric visualization tool for multivariate data.

Controller Testing

After the controller is fully configured it has to be tested. This is one test harness interface which permits the user to twiddle bits in registers on the controller boards, etc. This is Tcl/Tk in the realtime hardware realm. Also by Richard Stover.

Nassign view 1 and View 2

One of the instruments on Mt Hamilton is AMOS (A Multi-Object Spectrograph). This is a spectrograph which uses many optical fibers to place the light from objects in the sky onto a detector. The Nassign utility allows the scientist to explore different fiber positioning setups and save them for use during real observing. This is not a simple problem, nor (as you can see) is it a simple GUI! Here we have a more graphical or animated view of numeric configuration data, one which mimics the actual physical layout of the target hardware. Written by Will Deich.

ESI Spectrograph Control GUI

A modern astronomical instrument is like a very complicated semi-robotic camera. The observer (astronomer) needs some kind of "control panel" to set up and use the instrument during the observing night. Lick uses Dashboard, a Tcl/Tk application for building instrument GUIs, for several instruments: PFCAM, ESI, and the forthcoming DEIMOS. Here we are not mimicking the actual layout of the horribly complicated target hardware, but presenting a schematic or conceptual visual model of a real-time system. Written by De Clarke. See the ESI homepage and De's Tcl Pages.

Instrument Telemetry

Both during final QA testing and after the instrument is commissioned, we have to determine whether it is working as we expected. There are hundreds of telemetry values from the motors, temperature sensors, power supplies and so forth, which comprise the whole instrument. DataMynah is a pseudo-intelligent, pseudo-NL tool which permits engineers to delve into the mass of telemetry data and quickly get timeline plots showing instrument performance for any period of interest. Also written by De Clarke.

Controlling Telescopes with Tcl/Tk

UCO/Lick routinely controls instruments with GUIs written in Tcl/Tk, but our telescope and dome control systems (mostly older) tend to have old C/Xt type GUIs. The recent Gemini project, however, controls its twin 8-meter telescopes with a graphical Tcl/Tk interface written by David Terrett. Here you see both conceptual and physical representations of underlying systems on the same canvas.

Plotting Data from the 2dF Survey

The 2dF Survey is one of the largest astronomy projects in recent years. It's an enormous effort producing enormous quantities of data. This is one little Tcl/Tk plot widget used in the data reduction process. See also Documentation on the DRAMA instrument software development environment at AAO, which includes a Tcl extension.

Pipeline Data Reduction for 2dF

When massive amounts of data are produced quickly by large modern astronomical instruments, there's no way to reduce the incoming flood without some automation. Data reduction pipeline software is increasingly important in modern astronomy. This is the GUI for the 2dF data reduction pipeline, which permits an operator to supervise and configure the reduction process. Both these 2dF images come from a recent paper on the 2dF project.

Starlink GWM Image Display Widget

The fundamental problem of most astronomy is how to display gathered images (direct or spectral) intelligently, so the observer can get some meaning out of the bits. Astronomical images are not saved in widely-used formats like PNG or TIFF, but in a format called FITS. So astronomical institutions need specialized image display tools to handle the FITS format and the complex, semantically-rich image headers it permits. This is one such display tool, implemented as a Tk extension by David Terrett at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory for the Starlink project.

GAIA Starlink data reduction GUI

Just displaying the image is not enough. The observer needs a cartload of tools for manipulating and analyzing the image, so a real data reduction tool consists of an image viewer widget such as GWM, wrapped in a frame full of menus, pan views, zoom views, buttons, crosshairs, realtime pixel value readouts, etc. This is one such image reduction GUI currently maintained by Peter Draper. See note (1) at bottom of page!

DS9 CFA Data Reduction GUI

In the US, a popular image reduction tool called SAO has evolved steadily over the last several years; eventually (version "SAOtng") its image display became a Tk widget (SAOtk), and the current beta version is DS9, written by Bill Joye at CFA Harvard. UCO/Lick will probably use DS9 for the complicated images produced by the DEIMOS instrument.

NOTE (0)

NOTE (1)