Software Bisque Paramount ME - Defining the Park Position; Park Position Rules

Paramount ME User’s Guide
55
Defining the Park Position
Before parking the Paramount ME, you need to define the park position for your telescope.
This is the position that the mount will slew to when the Park command is issued from
TheSky6 Professional Edition. Please carefully read “XPark Position RulesX” on page X55X.
With a telescope link established, slew the telescope to the desired park position. From
TheSky6 Professional Edition, click Telescope > Options > Set Park Position. The park
position needs to be set once; the coordinates of the mount (in altitude/azimuth) are
automatically saved for future parks.
Software Bisque recommends that the telescope be parked as close to the home position as
practical. Since the Paramount ME must be homed at power up, the time required to find
the home position is reduced when the park position is near the home position.
Park Position Rules
 The Paramount ME must be synchronized correctly before you park the mount,
or define the park position. Otherwise, the mount will not return to the park
position that you define.
 When defining the park position near the meridian, make sure that the OTA is
on the opposite side of the meridian as the equatorial coordinate of the park
position. In other words, never define the park position when the counterweight
shaft is “above” horizontal.
Here’s an example of a situation that will cause unexpected parking behavior.
Suppose you want your telescope to always park in the same orientation “near”
the meridian, with the OTA on the east side (and the counterweights on the west
side) of the mount. So, you slew the mount to a location near the meridian that
also happens to be on the east side of the meridian, and then define the park
position.
Since the Paramount ME allows the OTA to slew up to five degrees past the
meridian before flipping sides, you’ve defined a park position that will cause the
mount to slew to a different orientation than when the park position was defined.
In this example, when you park the mount, the control system will still park the
telescope near the meridian, but with the OTA on the west side (and the
counterweights on the east side) of the mount.
 For mounts in the northern hemisphere, do not define the park position from
due west to due east (through north), and below the altitude of the celestial pole.
For mounts in the southern hemisphere, do not define the park position from
due east to due west (through south) and below the altitude of the celestial pole.