There is a local control unit (LCU) that has the ability to shutdown the facility under certain circumstances:
* Weather: the telescope will shutdown if meteorological limits are reached. Note that the LCU currently ignores the cloud monitor, which doesn't always give an accurate indication of cloud cover, so it is especially important to monitor for cloud yourself using the all-sky camera. You won't be able to startup the telescope again until the weather is good again.
* TCS connection: the LCU will close up the telescope if the connection to the user's TCS browser is lost for more than 10 minutes. It is therefore essential to reload the browser if you see a message informing you that the connection has been lost, else the telescope will shutdown in the middle of your observation.
* LCU connection: if the LCU drops out, then the telescope will also shutdown.