Dome Alignment and Other Problems

[Terry Kiser]

Hi Larry. I ran across this thread while looking for info about the dome slaving tolerance. This is off this topic but since I have the same setup in terms of using an Exploradome/AstroMC and since I spend at least 80% of my time problem solving issues with AstroMC and dome control, I couldn't resist asking how things are going with you?

I suspect the answer has a lot to do with the degree of automation one is after. I've spent almost two years working on my current setup and have yet to get some things to work reliably. My main goal was for semi-automation that would allow me to be hands off after I started an imaging session. For me, there are two aspects to this - shutting down after the session and being able to image beyond a meridian flip. The first one is mostly working out but every once in awhile ACP will throw a script error indicating the source is AstroMC, which aborts the session but more critically means my shutdown script doesn't run. Also, every once in awhile, my shutdown script will hang while AstroMC is closing the shutter or parking the dome.

The 2nd part isn't working well at all. 50% of the time or less, the dome won't align properly with the scope after a flip. Even after painstakingly measuring and re-measuring the geometry dimensions for dome alignment and spending innumerable hours trying to fine tune them, I have never gotten workable alignment all sky. My work around is to manually make sure I have good alignment with the intended target before starting an imaging session and I'm okay with only doing one target per session. This works up to a flip even if I start my plan 2 or 3 hours later but as mentioned no reliability for alignment after the flip.

Sorry for the long message but maybe you have some experiences that could help. I was searching for info on the slaving tolerance as I suspect this could be at the root of another issue I've only started having recently since changing my telescope setup. Something Bob said in reply to your message might be my answer but I'll continue this as a reply to the thread.

Thanks, Terry