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Scrolling down on the right hand scroll bar on the main PWI window, the next information section that
comes up is RA/Dec, than Alt/Az. In the RA and Dec window, it displays the current RA and Dec of the
telescope in hours, minute and seconds of right ascension for RA and degrees, minutes, and seconds for
declination. It also list the J2000 RA and Dec position of the telescope. Next is give the RA and Dec
positions of the target. For instance, if you pick a object from the database for which you want the
telescope to slew, that RA and Dec will appear in this window. After that, errors in RA and Dec are
displayed in arcseconds as well as RMS error values. This is the error is the difference between the
position the telescope is trying to be at versus the position it is really at.
The Alt/Az section has similar information, but in Alt/Az instead of RA/Dec. All the units are in degrees,
minutes and seconds of arc. An addition subtlety is that there is also Azm Encoder and Alt Encoder
values on this screen. This value is
the raw encoder value translated
to Alt/Az. There are no
corrections for all the modeling
that PointXP does. Nor are their
corrections for the levelness of the
mount on the pier. Lastly there
are Azimuth and Altitude
Velocities shown here too.
Scrolling down to PointXP, Auto Mount and Plate Solve Setting:
PointXP MOUNT MODEL: This window displays how many
calibration points the model has and the rms pointing error.
You can also press the EDIT MODEL button and PointXP will
open up.
Auto MOUNT: This window is used to create a mount model for
the telescope. Pressing START will activate the telescope to
create a mount model based on the parameters below. Azm
Steps and Alt Steps is defining how many azimuth positions the
telescope will slew too when creating the model. Alt Steps is
the same thing. So, in our default setting, the telescope will
slew to 13 different positions in azimuth and in each azimuth
position, it will go to 4 altitude position for a total of 4 x 13
positions, or 52.
PlateSolve Setting: When an Auto mount model is started, for each position that the telescope will add
a calibration point to the mount model, a plate solve will be done in that position. This window defines
the parameter for the image that is going to be taken to do the plate solve. In most cases you can just
