Scope xtrol, etc.

Bill J. Gray Apr 5, 2000

Hi folks,

Bob Elliott mentioned: "I also noticed that the date of last
observation is now located in the main list of data when you ask for
more info..." True; I will document this on NEW.HTM.

SKY COMMANDER/ORION CTI/SCOPE CONTROL:

The Sky Commander and the Orion CTI box are two very different beasts.
But both are in quite widespread use, and I can think of no good reason
for either to misbehave.

I believe the Sky Commander comes with some diagnostic software that
is supposed to verify that the link between the computer and the SC is
okay. This is quite useful, given how common cabling and serial port
configuration problems are (about 99% of the time, scope control problems
boil down to exactly that.) Also, you can fire up a Terminal or
Hyperterminal-type program, and send an Enter (carriage return) to the
Sky Commander. It should reply with fifteen bytes, giving the RA
in decimal hours and dec in decimal degrees.

The Orion CTI box is basically a Tangent Instruments box, resembling
the Ouranos, JMI NGC-Max, Lumicon, B-Box, MicroGuider, and Celestron
Advanced AstroMaster. These are a little trickier, since you have to run
through the alignment procedure in Guide, but are still relatively
straightforward. I'd need to know more than "it doesn't work" (do you
get an error message? Does it 'work', but point to the wrong part of
the sky? etc.) Private e-mail may be best for this... diagnosing such
problems often takes a few back-and-forth messages.

PLANET FEATURES:

Ned Smith mentioned vanishing planet features. While there are several
ways to shut them off on-screen, the lists of features and the "Go To...
Planet Feature" functions should be hard to break. The only thing I can
suggest is that for either to work, the object in question _must_ be
on-screen. That's how Guide knows to, for example, list Martian
features instead of lunar or Venerian (Venusian? Cytherian?) features.

Ned also asked about a "go to planet lat/lon" function. I will keep
this in mind as a possible new feature (it might not be very tricky to
add.) Right now, though, you can't do that in Guide.

-- Bill