Figure 3: The Pleiades image obtained with the camera finder. The faintest star in the frame has a
magnitude 8.3
m
3 The maintenance of the telescope coordinate system
The main task of the telescope mount is pointing and tracking of the object being studied. In principle,
the Meade RCX400 fork mount and its electronics execute that task, but the beginning of work is a
weak point.
Applied for the orientation of the mount level and magnetometer are good for visiting amateur
sessions, but in a stationary telescope installation is rather pointless. Setting the coordinate system
by pointing the telescope at 2-3 brightest star (Auto Alignment) provides good accuracy but only for
a few nights, because of the problem of saving of the accuracy from a shutdown to a shutdown.
Of course, you can keep the power on all the time, but even if we ignore the energy saving, it does
not solve the problem completely. Typically, for a few nights a coordinate system is lost due to failures
and mistakes in the proprietary software. Over 2 years of observations, we have consistently examined
several options for the conservation and restoration of the coordinate system. In the following list
these regimes of completion / start of the telescope are specified:
1. Park position. The Meade telescope parking using command :hP# has the following disadvan-
tages: 1) there is no possibility to obtain information on the completion of this procedure, 2) a
common error in the telescope soft often leads to tripping-over a limiter and to loss of coordinate
system, when telescope moving in a horizontal coordinate system.
2. Sleep Mode. This feature allows to reduce power consumption to a minimum without turning
off the telescope. The regime is activated by a command :hN# and the normal functioning is
switched in :hW#. However, several times we observed, when being in sleep mode, the telescope
would suddenly begin to move with big speed and ran into the limit stop.
3. Home Position. After telescope start, the command :hF# is issued — search starting position.
The telescope is positioned on its sensors, which gives sufficient accuracy for next pointing with
the use of finder. Disadvantages are a longer duration of the procedure and the low reliability
of the level.
4
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