Meade Instruments LX200 - Manual (Page 42)

Meade Instruments Corporation - Meade LX200 Instruction Manuals
The Permanently Mounted, Polar Aligned LX200 section to access the Object Library.
[ toc ] d) The Permanently Mounted, Polar Aligned LX200
For those who will permanently mount the LX200 in an observatory, or wish to use the already polar
aligned telescope for several nights in succession, it is recommended that a high-precision polar alignment
be made with one of the methods described above. Once done, however, you need not bother yourself to
go through a polar alignment routine on successive nights, provided that you do not move the instrument's
Equatorial Wedge or Field Tripod, to access the Object Library and enjoy near perfect tracking.
To bypass the polar alignment sequence, follow the steps outlined below:
1. Return to the POLAR menu option and place a check next to it by pressing the ENTER key.
2. Then directly enter the catalog number of an object that you are familiar with in the sky by pressing the
M, STAR, or CNGC key (see Appendix D. for a listing of the 64,359 Object Library) and press the ENTER
key again.
3. Manually center the familiar object in the eyepiece of the telescope.
4. Press and hold the ENTER key until the display reads 'Coordinates matched'.
5. You have now synchronized the Object Library and the LX200 will correctly access every other object in
the sky.
[ toc ] e) LAND
The LAND menu option transforms the ALTAZ (Altazimuth) mounted LX200 into an electric slewing
spotting scope. In this mode, continuous tracking is canceled and all of the celestial pertinent modes and
menus are non-functional, showing lower case lettering in the displays and a beep tone if you try to enter
one of them.
The LX200 will slew at any one of the four speeds of SLEW, FIND, CNTR, and GUIDE as activated by
pressing the appropriately marked keys on the extreme left of the Keypad display. Altazimuth coordinate
readings can still be displayed in the coordinates mode (see MODE 2 in this section). Refer to section D.
Quick Start in this manual for the LAND menu option, for full operating procedures. You will also find that
the addition of the Meade #928 45 Degree Erect Image Prism or the Meade #924 Porro Prism* instead of
the standard supplied star diagonal prism, will give the normal right side up and left to right views that you
are accustomed to when using a spotting scope.
[ toc ] 3) SMART
The SMART menu file controls the Smart Drive and allows you to train almost all of the periodic error from
the Right Ascension drive worm gear (errors induced by tiny gear imperfections that tend to slightly speed
up or slow down the drive tracking speed, that occur in a regular 8 minute pattern, or for every rotation of
the worm) for greatly enhancing the tracking characteristics or the amount of East and West drift of your
LX200. This greatly simplifies guiding during astrophotography. The menu also has provisions for
correcting Declination drift. Smart Drive will retain the training given to the R/A drive, even after the
telescope is turned off. There is of course a way to erase any training given to it at your command.
The SMART menu has five options. They are; LEARN, UPDATE, ERASE, DEC LEARN, and DEC
CORRECT. To use the Smart Drive, the LX200 must be mounted with the optional Equatorial Wedge (see
Appendix A), equipped with an illuminated reticle eyepiece*, and used in the POLAR align menu selection.
Be sure to train the Smart Drive in the 60.1 Hz Quartz setting that the LX200 will be automatically set at
power up. Thereafter, you can adjust this setting in the TIMER/ FREQ mode and still enjoy the periodic
error correction.
Once a polar alignment has been completed, your LX200 will point to a bright star overhead that will be
near the Celestial Equator. This will be a good star to train the Smart Drive on. You can of course, move to
another star just as long as you are near 0 degrees in declination and more or less overhead in Right
Ascension. Now is good time to set the brightness and/ or the pulse rate (see section E. The LX200
Keypad) of the illuminated reticle on the guide star and practice guiding for a few minutes.
To actually begin training the Smart Drive, move the LCD arrow to LEARN by using the PREV or NEXT key
and press ENTER. There will be numbers that will appear next to the LEARN display, that will begin
counting down to zero. The highest number that can appear is 240. The period of the worm is eight
minutes and the number represents a sector of the worm wheel which will change to the next lower digit
every two seconds. As the Keypad display approaches sector 5, an alarm will alert you that training is
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