Pointing Failure
Thursday, December 8, 2016 2:02 PM
Problem(s) Encountered:
From ~2am, telescope pointing had become completely wrong.
When I moved the telescope to zenith, the Dec. difference is about 20 degree. So, I manually moved the telescope near zenith, and then initialized position using ''zero'' command.
However, the pointing error was still so large that I couldn''t find any nearby bright stars and our targets in CCD field.
Solutions:
Came in to find the telescope pointed a fair ways south of zenith. Physical and stated positioning was certainly different. Brought telescope to zenith via tilt sensor display (-003/-008) and zeroed the telescope using the following command:
zero ra=xx:yy:zz (local sidereal time plus a few seconds) dec=31:57:12 equinox=2016.9
then hit <enter> when the sidereal time matched the entered ra time. Command took without issue. Slewed telescope to a couple points on the sky and then returned it to zenith. All motions appeared to work as commanded.