Labeling The Home Position On The Sky Chart - Paramount Fitness ME II User Manual

Subsequent observing sessions use TheSkyX Professional Edition's local sidereal time to determine the
mount's equatorial coordinates. Make sure the computer's clock is accurate (page 29).
Homing provides the following benefits.

Once a mount is aligned with the celestial pole and homed, repeatable and accurate pointing from
night to night can be achieved using TheSkyX Professional Edition and the TPoint Add On.

After homing, the mount "knows" its orientation and therefore cannot be slewed into the pier
(see "Software Slew Limits" on page 159).

The control system's periodic error correction (PEC) uses this information to calibrate the control
system's internal PEC table with the orientation of the worm gear.

The mount's orientation can be restored after power outages or other communication
malfunctions.

The home position can be used to align the polar axis to the celestial pole (see "Rough Polar
Alignment Method" on page 113).

Labeling the Home Position on the Sky Chart

Synchronizing the mount (page 25) on the wrong star or configuring TheSkyX Professional Edition to use
the wrong location, date, time or time zone for your location means the Paramount will be "lost in space".
The telescope cross hairs will appear in the "wrong" place on the Sky Chart and the mount will apparently
not slew to the correct coordinates when commanded to do so. If the coordinates of the telescope cross
hairs do not match the actual physical orientation of the Paramount, or it does not slew to the correct
coordinates, you will be scratching your head wondering what is wrong. The next step is to post a support
question asking, "Why is my mount pointing to the wrong coordinates?"
For this reason, Software Bisque strongly recommends creating a label that shows the location of the
mount's absolute home position (page 149) directly on the Sky Chart to provide a constant visual reminder
of where the telescope cross hairs must be after finding home.
If, after homing the mount, the telescope cross hairs do not end up very near hour angle 2 and declination
0 (or hour angle –2.0, declination 0 in the southern hemisphere), either TheSkyX Professional Edition's site
information is wrong or the mount has been synchronized on the wrong star.
Remember, the absolute home position of the Paramount cannot change. So, if the mount's relative home
position is wrong (or the telescope cross hairs do not appear in the correct location on the Sky Chart),
please double check the synchronization (page 25) and TheSkyX Professional Edition's location, date and
time settings for your location before submitting a support request.
To Label the Home Position in Software
The following procedure assumes this is a first time mount synchronization.
1. From TheSkyX Professional Edition, choose the Location command from the Input menu and make
sure the settings on the Custom tab match your observing site.
2. Choose the Verify TheSkyX Time command from the Tools menu to make sure you computer's
time matches an independent time source.
Paramount User Guide
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