Hi! In the Astro-Physics manual "GTO KEYPAD CONTROLLER" section "Using TheSky Software V. 5.00.014" p.52 , Software setup 4) Initialize your telescope, there is a mention to forget about initialize the telescope with GTO mount. I read it before so I never doubt than it will cause this kind of behavior. It's a good new to know than It will work now without short mapping run. A special thank to Ray. Yves laroche unvat001 wrote: Ray,
YOU DA MAN! Tonight I Initialized my scope, told it to go to
Castor, and it nailed it! Right on the crosshairs! Hopefully this
was not just a lucky fluke. I'll report back to the group if I have
any more problems. I have never "initialized" before, and I have
never had such fantastic results!!!
I wonder why I never heard of this before. Generally I read
manuals pretty closely. I wonder if it is in the 1200 User's Manual,
and I just missed it. I also don't remember seeing it in TheSky
manual. I would think this would be something they would want to put
in bold with asterisks. Mike Shade, myself, and I'll bet a few
others have been going crazy trying to get our wonderful hardware to
work with our wonderful software.
If I never learn another thing from this group, this has made it
all worth while.
Clear skies to all!
Pat Madden
--- In ap-gto@..., "Ray Gralak" <ray@g...> wrote:
Hi Pat,
After you link to the telescope go to the menu item:
Telescope -> Options -> Initialize
There you can press buttons to set the local date, time, long/lat, and GMT.
-Ray
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick J. Madden" <unvat001@y...>
To: <ap-gto@...>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 1:15 PM
Subject: RE: [ap-gto] AP1200 and TPoint
Ray,
I have NEVER intialized parameters in TheSky. Tell me more about
this. How do I do it?
Pat
Ray Gralak <ray@g...> wrote:Hi Pat,
Assuming that the keypad was not plugged in... Did you also
remember to go through the initialization of the parameters
(RA/Dec/Time) to the mount within TheSky? If you don't do that
then I think the mount does not know exactly where it is pointing.
Then of course if you do a GOTO the resulting position will be
wrong.
-Ray
-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick J. Madden [mailto:unvat001@y...]
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 9:16 AM
To: ap-gto@...
Subject: RE: [ap-gto] AP1200 and TPoint
Hello, Ray!
I am 95% sure that the keypad was not plugged in. (Of
course, if it was plugged in, and the time was different from
the computer's time, that would explain the EW error
perfectly.) I am away from the observatory now for a couple
of days on business, but if it is clear Sunday night I will
perform this test again and be ABSOLUTELY sure that the
keypad is unplugged!
Mr. Bisque also asked me to do another test. Do the same
routine: 1) sync on a star, 2) park, 3) power down the
scope, 4) come out of park, 5) go to the star. But to do
this not with TheSky and TPoint, but using only the AP
keypad. I am confident that the the 1200 mount will nail it,
but I will go ahead and perform the test anyway, just to be
sure. Thanks for your interest in my small "problem."
Actually I am embarrassed to even think of it as a problem.
I turn 55 this summer, and I remember my early days of
astronomy back in the 60's with my home-made telescopes. The
idea that I can turn on my mount, make a short mapping run of
6-12 stars, and then be able to have 9 arc second RMS
pointing error over the whole sky (with a maximum error of
about 25 arc seconds!) just blows my mind! Usually I do the
mapping run during dusk, while the camera is cooling down,
etc., so it does not affect my observing time one iota. Clear
skies to all! Pat Madden Ray Gralak wrote:Hi Pat,
When you turned on the mount was the hand controller plugged
in?
If not did you use TheSky to reload the mount with the
necessary startup info?
-Ray
-----Original Message-----
From: unvat001 [mailto:unvat001@y...]
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 10:33 PM
To: ap-gto@...
Subject: [ap-gto] AP1200 and TPoint
At the suggestion of Mr. Bisque I did the following
experiment.
Without TPoint running, I synced on a star using TheSky (the
AP
keypad was unplugged.) Then I: (1) parked the mount, (2) came out of
park, (3) told the scope to goto the star. The AP1200 put the
star
on the crosshairs. I repeated this experiment 5 times, with the same
results each time.
Then I did another experiment. I loaded a TPoint model,
performed
a "short mapping run," which ended with my crosshairs on
Pollux.
Then I (1) parked the mount, (2) came out of park, (3) told the scope
to goto Pollux. It put it on the crosshairs. I repeated this
experiment 5 times with the same results.
Then I parked the scope once again. But this time I turned
the power
off for a few minutes. Then I restored power to the scope,
came out
of park, and told it to go to Pollux. It was not even close.
It
missed by more than 2 1/2 degrees! The scope was too far east
(or
was it west?--I might have that backwards). Anyway, there was
no
error North-South.
It would seem that if you can keep power supplied to the scope, there
will be no need to perform a "short mapping run." However,
here in
Lousiana we have many thunderstorms, so I dare not leave it
plugged
in.
I am not sophisticated enough to know if this is a software
problem
or a hardware problem. I have sent the results of my tests to
Mr.
Bisque, and I am sure Roland will see them here. I really do
not
mind doing the short mapping runs, but it would be nice if
one day
this would not be necessary.
Clear skies to all!
Pat Madden
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