Paramount ME II Software Configuration1 GeneralThe Software Bisque Paramount ME II was installed successfully on November 19, 2015; and the RCOS 20 and accompanying Takahashi refractor were mounted on the dovetail plate and balanced with the provided counter-weights. To properly configure the mount for general operations for NOP/DSD/OTOP it is necessary to adjust the azimuth, mount plate balance, and altitude. Then it becomes necessary to polar align the mount within one arcsecond. Finally, it is incumbent upon us to establish a TPoint model known as a supermodel in the Software Bisque SkyX parlance to achieve great pointing accuracy when using the SkyX to locate objects and center them in the field of view of the Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA).When the telescope was first connected to the SkyX, it was necessary to setup the USB driver installation and configure that in the telescope connection setup. Next it was necessary to reduce the acceleration/deceleration parameters to permit the OTA to enable movement, without incurring a “beeping” error signal, because the telescope was being commanded to move or accelerate too quickly. Homing setup was not required as the pier was already aligned from the prior mount.This document provides a screen capture history of the polar alignment and super model creation. Initially the plate balance was checked and found to be satisfactory. Then the altitude was roughly adjusted for the latitude of Kitt Peak Observatory at the Visitor Center. Finally the software configuration steps for more accurate polar alignment were executed using PoleAlignMax. Then the supermodel was created using the SkyX TPoint calibration model tools.

2 Polar AlignmentPoleAlignMax was the tool chosen to accurately align the ME II mount to within one arcminute. The first step is to initialize the tool shown below:

PinPoint is used for plate solving. MaximDL used for imaging. The reference catalog is the GSC-1.1.

Below is the screen for the polar align, telescope, and log setup:

The next three screens show the PAM Telescope Connect setup:

Next the plate solve is run and physical adjustments are made to altitude and azimuth as required; rerun this until we are within one arcminute:

When the required polar alignment is achieved this should be the result:

3 Create TPoint SuperModelTo allow for accurate object acquisition, a super TPoint model should be created of over 200 points (objects). This is accomplished by using the SkyX TPoint calibration model tool.First setup the parameters for the automated pointing calibration run:

Next are sample setup examples for 32 point and 7 point calibration runs:

The result of the seven point model is shown below:

This illustrates a FITS view of an object with a seven point model:

Below is a calibration setup for a 253 point model:

Below is a calibration setup for a 347 point model:

Here is a 344 point model which was chosen:

This shows the resulting model parameters from the calibration run:

Here Protrack is activated to achieve a finer resolution of accuracy for pointing and tracking:

A sample image resulting from this implemented TPoint model: