In old times, telescopes were positioned with so-called circular scales, which mapped the celestial coordinate system. The positioning accuracy was increased like a caliper with an angular vernier to then track the telescope with a clockwork to the observation objects – a tedious procedure. This is long gone! Nowadays the telescope motors and possibly their encoders (like ours) are digitally controlled by a hand box or a computer program. This alone increases the observing comfort dramatically. It is even better, however, if a planetarium program works on the computer, with which the telescope position can be moved with the mouse on a digital sky map. This is already possible in our school lab and now we have set up these components on our large telescope. In addition, we are now able to set up a so-called telescope position model. It eliminates alignment and tracking errors of telescopes and thus guarantees a highly accurate positioning on the sky like at professional observatories.
1 comment
You may also like
Air for the stars
The main mirror of our large telescope is relatively thin, but still weighs 80kg. To maintain the nominal mirror shape during telescope movements, it lies on an air bag, whose pressure is adapted to the respective...
17. July 2022
Digital cameras
Our colleagues Sophia, Katharina and Lucia have tested all our CCD cameras today. This includes shots that provide the pixel noise and give information about the quality of the readout electronics. Other shots provide...
5. February 2022
The most expensive “swimming ring” in the world
Our large telescope is a professional instrument. On the one hand, the optics are “active”; adjusting weights at the primary mirror ensure the correct mirror position at any viewing direction and distance...
4. May 2021
CdC is such a good astronomical software~~~ I use it , too~