Welcome to AudeLA… You just installed the software and you want to do your first steps. Let's have a look first on this software philosophy.

AudeLA is a set of functions allowing to manage a telescope, CCD cameras, process astronomical images, etc… Those functions are accessible in Tcl/Tk language using scripts. Some people use AudeLA with scripts only and no user interface. But to simplify everyones access to those functions, an user interface called Aud'ACE has been developped. This is the interface which opens up when you run AudeLA for the first time. Aud'ACE includes a console where you can enter your line commands (very useful to test your scripts!) and a visualization window: Visu1. You can eventually open several “Visu”: Visu1 for your main camera, Visu2 for guiding camera, Visu3 for electronic finder…

Here are some initial parameter setup you can do when you first run AudeLA/Aud'ACE:

Setup / Langage: select here menu langage.

Setup / Folders: define working directpry for your images. You can also create a directory with current date so you have one directory per observing night. Change there also your defautl directory for your scripts and your catalogs - by default your user directory.

Setup / External programs: check there your favorite software are well set up.

Setup / Observer location: Indicate here your name and your observatory position which will be stored in FITS files. If your observatory is already known by the MPC (Minor Planet Center), you can just provide your observatory 3-digits code to get the location details.

Setup / Images files: Indicate if you want to store your image in 16bits or 32bits. Usually we leave it in 16bits knowing you can force 32bits during processing, for exemple when you add multiple images together (option “bit pix”) File are in FITS format; you can select the file extension (usually ”.fit” or ”.fits”). It is also possible to have compressed FITS file, which reduce usually by half the file size on your hard drive. AudeLA can manage this option in almost all modules.

Setup / Appearance: select there default colors and make your Aud'ACE unique!

Setup / Fonts: change there your font size if you have trouble to read the default size on your screen.

Setup / Optical: Indicate there the optical configuration of your scope (diameter, focal…). Those information will be sotred in your FITS file and can be used for automatic astrometry for exemple. You can define up to three optics: main scope, guiding scope and electronic finder for exemple.

Setup / Tool selection: AudeLA is powerful thanks to multiple modules. By default, they are all active but Aud'ACE menu can be too long then. Define there which module you want to be visible to you. You can also define a function key which will run the module when pressed. F2 is a special key as the associated module will be automatically opened when Aud'ACE is launched.

Camera / Acquisition: this is a basic module you can use to acquire your CCD images. It is recommanded to define the parameters for this module, specially the FITS keywords which will be stored in each FITS file - for exemple CCD temperature or target RA/DEC coordinate…