ASTRO-PHYSICS Mach2GTO, Manual, Page: 10 / 69

9
GETTING STARTED – DO THIS AT HOME, IF POSSIBLE
Set Up your Mount and Cable Connections
Refer to the instructions in the mount assembly manual to set up your mount. The following cables must be connected: RA
and Dec cables, keypad controller cable and power cable. You do not need the mounting plate or telescope tube assembly
for these setup procedures.
Gather Basic Information
You need to enter your local parameters to ensure that the mount functions properly. The mount needs to know the local
time (and whether you are on daylight savings) and the latitude and longitude of your observing site. You can enter up to
nine observing sites to be stored in memory.
To determine your latitude and longitude, do an internet Google search or use a GPS unit. The closer you can get the
better, however, it is not necessary to be exact to the seconds (last two number entry fields) since the purpose of these
entries is to calculate which objects are above your local horizon. Please make sure that your location information is in
Degrees: Minutes: Seconds format (i.e.: 42:22:00 Lat. 89:01:07 Long.), rather than decimal format (i.e. 42.3667° Lat.
89.0186° Long.). Also note if you are west or east of the Greenwich meridian. Information on converting the format is on
page 26 of the Setup section.
The time zone is determined from the Greenwich meridian. The keypad will automatically determine if you are east or west
of the Greenwich meridian based on your entered longitude, so entering a positive or negative number is not needed. For
your reference, these are the US time zones.
US Eastern standard time 05
US Central standard time 06
US Mountain standard time 07
US Pacific standard time 08
US Hawaii standard time 10
Most of this information will be entered only once and will be remembered by the keypad. We recommend that you make
these entries at home before you go to your observing session to ensure that you have the information that you need. If
you have a GPS (Global Positioning System) device, you may want to enter the coordinates once you reach your site and
have the proper numbers. Latitude and Longitude MUST be in degrees, minutes and seconds format. Decimal values
must be converted. We also recommend keeping a cheat sheet with each location’s relevant data.
Enter Your Location, Time and Date
Refer to the section entitled page 11. Once you have entered this data, you can explore the keypad menus and
functions with the information in this manual.