600E PE "Normal"???
Bob Benamati
Hi folks,
I'm wondering if the result I'm seeing is "normal" with my recently acquired 600E (while I wait for a 900 or Mach1 <g>). I've uploaded an Excel file to the Files section for those who might be able to help. PEMPro gave a +/- 25" error--which stunned me... It does seem that the worm is running slow(?) for the majority of the run. Any ideas as to what I'm seeing here? The mount's carrying an 8" M806, Pyxis rotator, and ST8. Probably right around 27 pounds--so probably overloading a bit, but I believe it's pretty well balanced. Other than the PE concern, though, the mount ran great last night and guided fairly well after programming (was able to get it down to +/- 8", but need to run a few more curves to refine--maybe I can get better). Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Bob
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New file uploaded to ap-gto
ap-gto@...
Hello,
This email message is a notification to let you know that a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the ap-gto group. File : /AP600 PE Curve-4-9.xls Uploaded by : bbenamati <bobbenamati@...> Description : PE Curve You can access this file at the URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ap-gto/files/AP600%20PE%20Curve-4-9.xls To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/web/index.htmlfiles Regards, bbenamati <bobbenamati@...>
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Re: is this a sane workflow?
Morgan Spangle <msfainc@...>
Are you using a planetarium program to control your mount? For
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
instance, in theSky6 pro, if connected to the mount and controlling it with theSky, you can simply slew to your focusing star, do your focus routine, then slew to your target and frame etc. Once done there, you can synch your position; once done with imitial imaging, you can go to the button "slew prior" and it will take you back to your focus star. Do your second focus, then hit the slew button to take you back to your target. You can do this all night if you need to...very simple, very few steps. Morgan
--- In ap-gto@..., "Mike" <mike@...> wrote:
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Re: help please - various items
observe_m13
Go here:
http://www.astro-physics.com/tech_support/tech_support.htm download the latest manual. Read it fully, cover to cover except for the tables at the back. Read any parts you don't understand again. Rick. --- In ap-gto@..., Gerald Sargent <sargentg@...> wrote: at all well) is seemed to go OK as it did the second time. Each time I hadjust switched off, then before restarting loosened the clutches and putcould not get it to do anything and had to resort to phoning a colleague in UKwhich I did and it then went. I then read the manual and concluded that it wasbefore switch off one must "park". So far OK.Now for the problems for which Ithis in the manual. Howard explained to me, very thoroughly, that the stopbutton onlly stops slewing but does not affect the tracking. How can Istop/restart tracking withpout switching off the mount ?
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Re: serial converter
mizzou156 <mizzou156@...>
--- In ap-gto@..., "George Whitney" <gwhitney@...> wrote:
Hello George,I'll second Roy's opinion about I/O Gear. Tech support has been great. I've been using their equipment outdoors in all weather conditions with no problems. Look into their Edgeport rs 232 to usb converters and the Anywhere ethernet to usb hubs. They work with Windows and Mac ( with VM Fusion). Howard,
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Astronomy Insurance- Thank You
mizzou156 <mizzou156@...>
Hello,
I want to thank you all for your responses. I am currently looking into another insurer (Chubb) for coverage. I will also look into AIG. State Farm provided me with a bad experience years ago, so they are not even in the running. I do appreciate all of your help...........Jerald
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Re: help please - various items
Jeff Young <jey@...>
I concur that the manual is quite good and should be read. It's not
like the Meade manuals which leave rather much to be desired. (I can't speak for Vixen, but if their translations are anything like Takahashi's, well, they can be pretty rough going.) One thing though -- if you bought your mount used then download the most recent manual off Astro-Physics' web site. Whenever they find something that wasn't explained well enough in the manual they tend to update it -- so the most recent one is by far the most clear. -- Jeff. ________________________________ From: ap-gto@... [mailto:ap-gto@...] On Behalf Of Steve Reilly Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 4:51 AM To: ap-gto@... Subject: RE: [ap-gto] help please - various items The mount is "parked" in any position you when you power off. There are three designated park positions as referred to in the manual. I highly recommended a through reading of the manual. You can also configure your mount for auto-connect which means it reads your time and location that you have programmed into the hand controller. When you power on, the mount is automatically initialized and starts to track. You can slew to your targets if Polar aligned. The manual gives you all the necessary information and is quite clear. It should be read before trying to do anything. If you are referring to using PemPro for Polar alignment, the program sends the code by itself. If you are using some other program and it does not send the code then look at your tracking rates. There is a stop rate. If you loose power or turn off the power to the mount, it is parked. Simply turn the power back on and it knows where it is already unless you have physically moved the mount. Again, and I can not stress this enough, read the manual. I don't know anything about using the mount in the Southern hemisphere but I'm sure the manual covers any differences between Northern and Southern hemisphere operations. HTH, Steve _____ From: ap-gto@... <mailto:ap-gto%40yahoogroups.com> [mailto:ap-gto@... <mailto:ap-gto%40yahoogroups.com> ] On Behalf Of Gerald Sargent Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 11:36 PM To: ap-gto@... <mailto:ap-gto%40yahoogroups.com> Subject: [ap-gto] help please - various items I am a new user of AstroPhysics coming from the Vixen SS2KPC stable. The first time I switched on the unit (not having studied the manual at all well) is seemed to go OK as it did the second time. Each time I had just switched off, then before restarting loosened the clutches and put telescope to the pole (I am in the S. Hemisphere). The third time I could not get it to do anything and had to resort to phoning a colleague in UK who has an AP. He told me how to unpark it, (I had not parked it) which I did and it then went. I then read the manual and concluded that it was impossible to work the mount except by first "unparking". Also that before switch off one must "park". So far OK.Now for the problems for which I need help please...... 1. In using some of the polar Alignment programs it is necessary to stop the tracking temporarily then restart it. I can find no way of doing this in the manual. Howard explained to me, very thoroughly, that the stop button onlly stops slewing but does not affect the tracking. How can I stop/restart tracking withpout switching off the mount ? 2. If I switch off (accidentally or power failure) how do I resume use, preferably at the same spot ?
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600E first light
Morgan Spangle <msfainc@...>
Finally had a good night last night and took out the Questar 7 on the
600E for some visual double star observing. Setup was easy - I used the polar scope (pasill4) from my 1200 mount (I didn't tune it to the 600 before using it, so it was probably a little off), and followed the 2 star routine in the manual, using Dubhe in the east and Procyon in the west; did three iterations and according to Tpoint, that brought me to 7 arcminutes west, and 12 arcminutes south of the pole. Question: on my 1200, you know what one turn of the fine az adjusters means in terms of arcminutes; is there a similar known value for the alt/az adjusters on the 600E? Anyway, I couldn't get the stars to converge on the center but I figured the alignment was close enough for visual observations; plus, I hooked up to theSky6 and did a short 12 star Tpoint run - after that, every target was in the field of a 16mm Brandon - at about 2750mm focal length, I thought that was really good! Using astroplanner to control the scope, I ran through a list of doubles in CVN and COM; the seeing was really good, tho there was a high haze, but I was still able to split an unequal Struve double at 1.1 arcseconds - fun! All in all, the time flew while I was enjoying the views. The mount held the Q7 rock solid. A lovely spring evening... Morgan
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Re: 600E PE "Normal"???
gilovision2@...
Dans un e-mail daté du 09/04/2008 18:23:58 Paris, Madrid,
bobbenamati@... a écrit : PEMPro gave a +/- 25" error--which stunned me... It does seem that the worm is running slow(?) for the majority of the run. Any ideas as to what I'm seeing here? Are you sure your parameters (focal length...) were OK? In any case, your curve is smooth, so PEM should work fine with your mount, much better than a small PE that shows sudden jumps. Gilles [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Re: help please - various items
Roland Christen
In a message dated 4/8/2008 10:36:12 PM Central Daylight Time,
sargentg@... writes: 1. In using some of the polar Alignment programs it is necessary to stopThe mount has 4 tracking rates: Sidereal, Solar, Lunar and Stop. The last one will stop tracking. It's on your keypad in the Main Menu. Place the keypad in Autostart YES mode and it will automatically start every time you turn power on. Turning power off will park the mount in the spot where you left the scope. Turning power back on automatically resumes the mount from the previous position. No need to do anything else. Rolando ************** Planning your summer road trip? Check out AOL Travel Guides. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-guide/united-states?ncid=aoltrv00030000000016)
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Re: serial converter
Poschinger Konstantin v. <KPoschinger@...>
Hello Howard,
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
I used a keyspan with 4 serial ports. The connection with the computer is realized cause of the long distance with a ICORON 4 port Hub. When I try to use the newer ICRON USB 2. the Keyspan didn't worked. Now I use for USB 2.0 the edgeport. It works fine with both, the USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 Konstantin Konstantin v. Poschinger Hammerichstr. 5 22605 Hamburg 040/8805747 01711983476 Am 09.04.2008 um 01:08 schrieb Howard:
Hi George and All,
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Re: is this a sane workflow?
Roland Christen
Having a bigger chip is the key to fast focusing. With a big chip like the
ST10 or STL11k, there is always a star somewhere that can be used for focus. It is then a matter of simply defining the focus point by drawing a little box around the star that the software (Maxim) remembers. Rolando In a message dated 4/8/2008 10:26:01 PM Central Daylight Time, mike@... writes: Hello ************** Planning your summer road trip? Check out AOL Travel Guides. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-guide/united-states?ncid=aoltrv00030000000016)
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Re: help please - various items
Steve Reilly <sreilly@...>
The mount is "parked" in any position you when you power off. There are
three designated park positions as referred to in the manual. I highly recommended a through reading of the manual. You can also configure your mount for auto-connect which means it reads your time and location that you have programmed into the hand controller. When you power on, the mount is automatically initialized and starts to track. You can slew to your targets if Polar aligned. The manual gives you all the necessary information and is quite clear. It should be read before trying to do anything. If you are referring to using PemPro for Polar alignment, the program sends the code by itself. If you are using some other program and it does not send the code then look at your tracking rates. There is a stop rate. If you loose power or turn off the power to the mount, it is parked. Simply turn the power back on and it knows where it is already unless you have physically moved the mount. Again, and I can not stress this enough, read the manual. I don't know anything about using the mount in the Southern hemisphere but I'm sure the manual covers any differences between Northern and Southern hemisphere operations. HTH, Steve _____ From: ap-gto@... [mailto:ap-gto@...] On Behalf Of Gerald Sargent Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 11:36 PM To: ap-gto@... Subject: [ap-gto] help please - various items I am a new user of AstroPhysics coming from the Vixen SS2KPC stable. The first time I switched on the unit (not having studied the manual at all well) is seemed to go OK as it did the second time. Each time I had just switched off, then before restarting loosened the clutches and put telescope to the pole (I am in the S. Hemisphere). The third time I could not get it to do anything and had to resort to phoning a colleague in UK who has an AP. He told me how to unpark it, (I had not parked it) which I did and it then went. I then read the manual and concluded that it was impossible to work the mount except by first "unparking". Also that before switch off one must "park". So far OK.Now for the problems for which I need help please...... 1. In using some of the polar Alignment programs it is necessary to stop the tracking temporarily then restart it. I can find no way of doing this in the manual. Howard explained to me, very thoroughly, that the stop button onlly stops slewing but does not affect the tracking. How can I stop/restart tracking withpout switching off the mount ? 2. If I switch off (accidentally or power failure) how do I resume use, preferably at the same spot ?
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help please - various items
Gerald Sargent <sargentg@...>
I am a new user of AstroPhysics coming from the Vixen SS2KPC stable.
The first time I switched on the unit (not having studied the manual at all well) is seemed to go OK as it did the second time. Each time I had just switched off, then before restarting loosened the clutches and put telescope to the pole (I am in the S. Hemisphere). The third time I could not get it to do anything and had to resort to phoning a colleague in UK who has an AP. He told me how to unpark it, (I had not parked it) which I did and it then went. I then read the manual and concluded that it was impossible to work the mount except by first "unparking". Also that before switch off one must "park". So far OK.Now for the problems for which I need help please...... 1. In using some of the polar Alignment programs it is necessary to stop the tracking temporarily then restart it. I can find no way of doing this in the manual. Howard explained to me, very thoroughly, that the stop button onlly stops slewing but does not affect the tracking. How can I stop/restart tracking withpout switching off the mount ? 2. If I switch off (accidentally or power failure) how do I resume use, preferably at the same spot ?
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is this a sane workflow?
Mike C
Hello
I have an AP1200. My requirement: I need to jump back and forth between my selected composition/framing of an object, and a bright star suitable for repeatedly focusing with different filters. I am doing this by 1) slewing to a bright "focus star" near the intended target, doing a calibrate on it, 2) focus the camera 3) Then I do the short slew to the main target, and carefully frame the image. Once the picture is composed, I go to object menu and press ">" which seems to cache the RA/DEC of the current position for later retrieval. 4) When I'm ready to change filters I slew to the bright star again by name, and do the filters & focus work. 5) When ready to take photos again, I go to the objects menu and press "#7 - R/D" which has the coords of my careful framing remembered. Repeat 4-5 for each filter or photograph series. I know the easy way to do this is a robofocus and a filter wheel, but pretend I don't have $1200 for that stuff right now... Am I doing this repeated change between two sky positions in a silly manner? Is there any handy software where I can tell it to remember a number of sky coordinates and just simply click on them A.. B.. A... B... to go between them? Thanks! Mike Clemens
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Re: serial converter
roy uyematsu <roystarman@...>
I use the ones made by I/O gear and they seem to work with no issues. You do
need to find the com ports and make sure they agree with the software. I have used an edgeport in the past and it is good because on USB cable can contain several different interfaces. I like the 2 COM and 4 USB port box since you get 2 coms ports one for the mount and one for the focuser. USB for the camera and you are set and only one cable to connect to the laptop.. Roy Uyematsu roystarman@... _____ From: ap-gto@... [mailto:ap-gto@...] On Behalf Of Howard Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 7:08 PM To: ap-gto@... Subject: RE: [ap-gto] serial converter Hi George and All, We have been looking into the Keyspan units. I have currently used the single port USA-19HS and the four port USA-49WG on several machines including a PC with XP, a laptop with Vista and a Mac Powerbook laptop. They have worked flawlessly! We are still planning to offer them eventually, but unfortunately haven't gotten that far yet. I'll see if I can get the ball rolling on that project again. Our plan is to also offer straight-through serial cables that actually work since they have become a bit of a challenge to find. I'll post if and when anything develops. Mag. 7 skies! Howard Hedlund Astro-Physics, Inc. 815-282-1513 ____________-_________-_________-__ From: HYPERLINK "mailto:ap-gto%40yahoogroups.com"ap-gto@... [mailto:HYPERLINK "mailto:ap-gto%40yahoogroups.com"ap-gto@...] On Behalf Of George Whitney Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 3:59 PM To: HYPERLINK "mailto:ap-gto%40yahoogroups.com"ap-gto@... Subject: [ap-gto] serial converter Howard, A while back you said that AP was investigating a serial / USB converting device. Has there been any progress? I recall that it was a single company's device that had caught your attention. Thank you, George No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.10/1366 - Release Date: 4/8/2008 5:03 PM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.10/1366 - Release Date: 4/8/2008 5:03 PM
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Re: serial converter
Hi George and All,
We have been looking into the Keyspan units. I have currently used the single port USA-19HS and the four port USA-49WG on several machines including a PC with XP, a laptop with Vista and a Mac Powerbook laptop. They have worked flawlessly! We are still planning to offer them eventually, but unfortunately haven't gotten that far yet. I'll see if I can get the ball rolling on that project again. Our plan is to also offer straight-through serial cables that actually work since they have become a bit of a challenge to find. I'll post if and when anything develops. Mag. 7 skies! Howard Hedlund Astro-Physics, Inc. 815-282-1513 ________________________________ From: ap-gto@... [mailto:ap-gto@...] On Behalf Of George Whitney Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 3:59 PM To: ap-gto@... Subject: [ap-gto] serial converter Howard, A while back you said that AP was investigating a serial / USB converting device. Has there been any progress? I recall that it was a single company's device that had caught your attention. Thank you, George
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serial converter
George Whitney <gwhitney@...>
Howard,
A while back you said that AP was investigating a serial / USB converting device. Has there been any progress? I recall that it was a single company's device that had caught your attention. Thank you, George
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Re: Insurance for astronomy equipment
ayiomamitis
Eric,
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
In my case, they sent an "expert" who validated the costs I specified in the Excel spreadsheet I had prepared for them and who also confirmed the serial numbers I provided them and, finally, took two photos of each item (the item itself and then the serial number). These photos are also printed in the policy. Anthony.
--- In ap-gto@..., "elraeburn" <elraeburn@...> wrote:
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Re: Insurance for astronomy equipment
ayiomamitis
Stuart,
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
I did precisely the same thing and, in fact, I found a printed copy of the spreadsheet I had prepared for them within the policy itself once everything was finalized. This is good advice and everyone should pursue it! Anthony.
--- In ap-gto@..., "S HEGGIE" <stuart.j.heggie@...> wrote:
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