A strange thing happened a couple of days ago, and I wonder if anyone has a clue why.

Recently I've been struggling trying to collimate my telescope. One thing I wanted to try was an artificial star. This involved turning off tracking in the AP1200 GTO. Here's the scenario:

1. Powered-up the AP1200 and connected to it in ACP.
2. Turned off tracking with the hand control. Verified that ACP's Sidereal Rate box was unchecked, which I assume means that ACP knew the tracking was turned off at the mount.
3. Used the hand control to point the telescope at the artificial star.
4. When done, told ACP to park the telescope.

As soon as I did step 4, the telescope did not move, but ACP said it was parked. It actually wasn't anywhere close to the parked position. So I disconnected the scope in ACP and went into the telescope setup dialog. I verified the ASCOM driver had the right coordinates for the park position, and clicked the Park button in the ASCOM driver dialog. At this point the AP1200 slewed to the correct park position.

Does anyone know why ACP thought the telescope was parked when it really wasn't? This isn't a big deal, and everything has been working fine since then when pointing at real targets. Thanks in advance for any insights.

Mike
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Mike Dodd
Montpelier, VA USA
http://astronomy.mdodd.com