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Earthshine blog

"Earthshine blog"

A blog about a telescopic system at the Mauna Loa Observatory on Hawaii to determine terrestrial albedo by earthshine observations. Feasible thanks to sheer determination.

Dome Azimuth

Dome issues Posted by peter.thejllPosted on Oct 19, 2011 12:32

Upper plot shows (red labelled crosses) observed relationship between dome azimuth (value next to cross) and telescope azimuth/altitude. The contours are due to a bi-linear interpolation.
Lower plot shows the same data but interpolated with ‘kriging’.



Dome Home and the Extra Circuits

Dome issues Posted by peter.thejllPosted on Oct 16, 2011 08:09

Doing the homes on the dome, to see if it needs re-doing if all you do is turn off the system and turn it back on. I.e. – will the dome do the ‘two circuits’ first time you set a dome AZ?

This is what happens:

1) You press the Find Home button on the Dome tab and the dome does a whole or almost a whole circuit and stops at Home which appears to be due south.

2) You ask it to go to some other AZ – the dome does a whole or almost a whole circuit and settles on home – i.e. Due South

3) You ask it again for an AZ and it goes there.

4) Stop on the EM. Turn power off the mount on iBoot (i.e. channel 5). Turn the power ON on the iBoot for the mount. Turn the EM on again.

5) Aak for a dome AZ – and the dome goes there.

So, it seems you get two Find Homes at the start and then the system works, across a power cycle.

Later: some results seem to indicate that the ‘reset’ is done by Turning labView Off – as in rebooting the system or using the ‘Exit’ button (i.e. so that no instances of labView are seen in the Task manager). Umm.