Paramount User Guide
22
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P a g e
Homing
Mount synchronization is one of the least understood and most confusing processes for new
Paramount users; understanding exactly what homing a Paramount does is a very close
second. Please carefully read the following to avoid falling into the “my mount is not homing
to the correct position” trap.
Finding the home position, or “homing” the Paramount is an automated initialization process. When the
Paramount control system receives the “find home position command”, the mount’s right ascension
and
declination axes are slewed to an
absolute
,
mechanically fixed
orientation.
Homing
must be performed
every time
the Paramount is powered on so that the control system can
establish the mount’s position and restore the synchronization information, when possible.
Once the mount is homed, and the previous session’s synchronization information is applied by
TheSkyX
Professional Edition
, the telescope will know its orientation and have the same pointing accuracy as the
last observing session.
The home position is located at hour angle 2 and 0 degrees declination. The
home position is a
fixed, mechanical orientation
and
cannot change
; it is
defined by the
physical position
of the gears relative to fixed internal
homing sensors. See “Physically Marking the Home Position” on page 24
for a simple procedure to demonstrate the mount’s absolute home
position.
If the mount is not physically pointing to approximately hour angle 2 and 0
degrees declination after finding home, then either the Versa-Plate is
mounted incorrectly, the mount’s polar axis is not oriented north-south.
If, after homing is complete, the coordinates of the telescope cross hairs
displayed by
TheSkyX Professional Edition
indicate that the mount is pointing
anywhere other than the home position, then either
TheSkyX Professional
Edition’s
location, date, time or time zone is not correct, or the mount has been
synchronized incorrectly. See “Synchronization” on page 25 for more
information.
The Paramount cannot slew and will not track at the
sidereal rate until after the mount is successfully homed.
When a
Find Home
command is issued from the hand controller (by double-tapping the button on the
end of the joystick handle, see page 108 for details) or
TheSkyX Professional Edition
(page 119), the mount
slews to the home position and zeros the control system’s “position registers”. When the mount is
subsequently synchronized on a star, the computed hour angle and declination of the home indices are
stored in the internal flash of the Paramount’s control system.
