Paramount GEM User Guide
21 | P a g e
Use TheSky Professional’s “Rough Polar Alignment” feature (page 101) to align the
mount’s polar axis to within 10-15 arcminutes of the pole. This step can be performed
during daylight hours using the Sun with proper solar filters on the telescope.
Use the TPoint module’s Accurate Polar Alignment feature to align the mount’s polar axis
to the pole using a fiducial star.
-Or-
If the celestial pole is visible, and you have a polar alignment scope, use it to roughly align
the mount to the celestial pole.
See “How to Polar Align” on page 101 for the best ways to achieve optimal polar alignment.
Homing
The mechanical orientation of Paramount Series 6 mounts without on-axis absolute encoders must be
established each time the mount is turned on. The homing process initiated with TheSky’s Find Home
command slews both axes until internal home sensors are detected. When complete, the control system
establishes the mount’s position withing a few arcseconds.
Please carefully read the following to avoid falling into the common “my mount is not
homing to the correct position” dilemma.
Homing is not required for Paramount mounts equipped with on-axis absolute encoders.
Once the mount is successfully homed, the previous session’s pointing calibration is applied, and the
mount knows its orientation and has close to the same pointing accuracy as the last observing session.
• In Paramount Series 6 mounts, the home position is located at hour angle 0,
declination 0, with the OTA on the east side of the pier. The home position is a fixed,
mechanical orientation and cannot change; it is defined by the physical position of
the gears relative to fixed internal homing sensors. See “Physically Marking the Home
Position” on page 24 for a simple procedure to demonstrate the mount’s absolute
home position.
• After successfully finding home, if the mechanical orientation of the hour angle and
declination axes are not at hour angle 0 and declination 0 with the telescope on the
east side of the pier, then either the Versa-Plate, or telescope is mounted incorrectly,
or the mount’s polar axis is not oriented north-south.
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