Error in Homing Telescope
Thursday, March 3, 2016 10:32 AM
Problem(s) Encountered:
When homing the telescope at the end of the night, the TCS got confused about where the telescope is in declination. The telescope is now pointed at zenith, but the TCS control panel reads +48 for the dec. I left it that way, and will deal with it tomorrow.
Solutions:
Cycled the telescope servers (telescope stop, then telescope start) from a mdm13ws1 terminal window. Then homed HA and Dec. Problem may have originated from trying to home multiple tasks (ie HA & Dec) simultaneously. Homing tasks should always be performed in a singular manner. Also, it should be pointed out that homing the telescope does not necessarily mean stowing the telescope to zenith. If setting the telescope to zenith at the end of the night, with systems adequately homed already, I use the command “point ha=0 dec=31:57:12 nodome”. Homing appears to simply correlate telescope positioning with the tilt sensor readouts.