Upgrades And Automation At The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (Vatt)

The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) is a 1.8m Gregorian telescope with an f/1 primary and an f/9 full system optics. It has been in operation since 1993 and some of its systems are showing their age. Here, we list the completed and planned upgrades for some of the aging systems. We focus on a new secondary controller and high resolution absolute encoders. Our objective is to automate telescope operation. We outline the expanded science potential, especially for surveys and Time Domain Astronomy. Finally, we examine new software that will assist in automation and describe some of the challenges involved in automating VATT.