Paramount User Guide
32
|
P a g e
Defining the Park Position
Before parking the Paramount, you need to define the park position. This is the position that the mount
will slew to when the Park command is issued from
TheSkyX Professional Edition
. Please carefully read
With a telescope link established, slew the telescope to the desired park position. From
TheSkyX
Professional Edition
, choose the
Set Park Position
command from the
Shut Down
pop-up menu on the
Telescope
window. The park position needs to be set once; the coordinates of the mount (in
altitude/azimuth) are automatically saved for future parks.
Software Bisque recommends that, if possible, the telescope be parked as close to the home position as
practical. Since the Paramount must be homed at power up, the time required to find the home position
is reduced when the park position is near the home position.
Park Position Rules
The Paramount must be correctly synchronized
before
the mount is parked and before the park
position can be defined. Otherwise, the mount will not return to the correct park position.
When defining the park position near the meridian, make sure that the OTA is on the opposite
side of the meridian as the equatorial coordinate of the park position. In other words, never
define the park position when the counterweight shaft is “above” horizontal.
Here is an example of a situation that will cause unexpected parking behavior. Suppose you want
your telescope to always park in the same orientation “near” the meridian, with the OTA on the
east side (and the counterweights on the west side) of the mount. So, you slew the mount to a
location near the meridian that also happens to be on the east side of the meridian, and then
define the park position.
Since the Paramount allows the OTA to slew
past
the meridian (two hours maximum for the
Paramount ME II and 2.5 hours for the Paramount MX and Paramount MX+) before flipping sides,
you have now defined a park position that will cause the mount to slew to a different orientation
than when the park position was defined. In this example, when you park the mount, the control
system will still park the telescope near the meridian, but with the OTA on the west side (and the
counterweights on the east side) of the mount.
For mounts in the northern hemisphere, do not define the park position from due west to due
east (through north), and below the
altitude
of the celestial pole. For mounts in the southern
hemisphere, do not define the park position from due east to due west (through south) and below
the
altitude
of the celestial pole.
Audible Control System Feedback
Each time the mount is turned on the control system performs both an electronics and servomotor
initialization procedure, and emits different sounds based on the status of the initialization. A short
whistle is emitted immediately after the power switch is turned on and indicates successful initialization
