Telescope Reviews: Paramount MX vs Astro-Physics AP900

I have the ME, so I can only tell you about my experience with the ME. It should be about the same for the MX.

As you said, I assume you're talking about field use here because in an observatory setting it takes zero time once it's been done once. And of course in an observatory you want to spend lots of time on that initial polar alignment and modeling to get it as perfect as possible. In that environment you might spend the first whole night on just futzing around with that and nothing else.

In the field where you're repeatedly setting up and tearing down your site, how long it takes depends on what method you use, how well you want to be polar aligned and how good a pointing model you want to have.

Here is what I do in the field. I only have to do this the first night out so long as I leave the mount set up. On subsequent nights I then just have to connect to the mount, let it home itself and go.

1. Point the mount North, adjust the altitude knob to my latitude, turn the power on, connect to the mount.
2. Home the mount.
(Note that the latest version of TheSkyX has an "all sky image link" feature that lets you skip steps #3 through #6 and go directly to step #7 right off the bat.)
3. Use the computer to select and slew to a star near the Meridian (on the West side of the Meridian) near 0 DEC. It won't be centered.
4. Manually adjust the altitude and azimuth to center the star. Repeat #3 and #4 a few times.
5. Sync on the star and map it as the first t-point point.
6. Slew to a few more nearby stars (on the West side of the Meridian) using the hand paddle, center them using the hand paddle and map them. Once that's done the mount is close enough for plate solves to work.
7. Fire up a short automated t-point mapping run of 15-20 points.
8. After the sort mapping run, adjust altitude and azimuth as instructed by t-point.
9. Clear the t-point points, slew to a star, center it, sync on it, map it and repeat #7 and #8 until I'm happy with the polar alignment. About half an hour to 45-minutes has elapsed by the time I'm happy.
10. Fire up a large automated t-point run of maybe 120-180 points and go look through other people's scopes while it runs by itself. When complete I have better than 10-arc-second RMS all sky pointing.
11. Turn on ProTrack to get improved tracking that benefits from the pointing model.

I left out miscellaneous incidental stuff like focusing the camera. I use CCDsoft. My camera is a QSI-583wsg. During t-point mapping runs I have TheSkyX take 5-second exposures with a clear filter. If you don't use CCDsoft, then make sure TheSkyX supports your camera!

Edited by frolinmod (03/22/11 03:20 AM)