Powering The Starseeker Iv Mount; The Synscan Goto Hand Controller - Orion StarSeeker IV Instruction Manual

upside down or rotated to some degree. This is normal! For
astronomical viewing image orientation is not critical because,
after all, there's no "right side up" in space. But if you're plan-
ning to use your telescope also for terrestrial viewing, you
may want to purchase a "correct-image" diagonal, which will
produce a correctly oriented, right-side-up view. Reflector tele-
scopes are not recommended for terrestrial viewing.
Powering the StarSeeker IV
Mount
Your StarSeeker IV mount can be powered by 8 user-supplied
AA alkaline batteries inserted into the battery compartment
located in the mount arm (see Figure 15 .) (Note that the bat-
tery holder must be removed from the compartment to install
four AA batteries on the back side). Alternatively, you can run
the mount with an optional AC-to-DC adapter or a 12V DC
field battery such as the Orion Dynamo Pro. A DC car-lighter
style cable is provided with your telescope to connect a 12V
field battery to your mount. Insert the plug of the DC cable into
the "Power" jack located on the mount arm (Figure 16).
Toggle the power switch to the ON ( — ) position. The LCD on
the StarSeeker's hand controller will immediately light up and
display the opening message. To turn the StarSeeker IV mount
off, toggle the power switch to OFF ( O ).
The SynScan GoTo Hand
controller
The "command center" of the StarSeeker telescope is the
SynScan V4 GoTo hand controller (Figure 17). In conjunc-
tion with the precision servo motors built into the mount, as
well as the two optical encoders in each axis, the user-friendly
SynScan controller allows automated, pinpoint slewing of the
telescope to any celestial object in its 42,900-object database,
saving you the trouble of manually searching for them. You can
even tour a pre-selected list of the finest showpiece objects
visible in tonight's sky with just a few button pushes. Once your
target object has been acquired, the mount tracks its motion
across the sky to keep it in the field of view.
Keypad Layout and Connection Ports
The hand controller's two-line liquid crystal display (LCD) is
backlit for comfortable viewing. The contrast of the text and the
brightness of the red backlight are both adjustable.
There are four categories of control keys on the hand control-
ler (Figure 17A):
1) Mode keys
2) Directional keys
3) Scroll keys
4) Dual Purpose keys
Mode Keys
The three mode keys are ESC, ENTER, and MENU.
• ESC is used to escape from a certain command or go back
a level in the menu tree.
10
a.
Serial
cable port
(RJ-12)
B.
Figure 17. A) The SynScan V4 GoTo hand controller,
B) Hand controller cable port and serial cable port on the
bottom end of the controller.
• MENU is a quick hot key that takes you to the Setup
submenu.
• ENTER is used to select the functions and submenus in the
menu tree, and to confirm certain functional operations.
Direction Keys
The direction keys (Up, Down, Left, Right) allow the user to
have complete control of the mount at almost any step in
Display
screen
Mode keys
Direction
keys
Dual purpose
(shortcut)
keys
Scroll keys
Hand controller
cable port
(RJ-45)