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Big Bear Lake, CA — Software
Bisque demonstrated its Paramount GT-1100 robotic telescope mount at the
Riverside Telescope Makers Conference on May 22 and May 23, 1998. The
Paramount was under control of Software Bisque’s Professional Astronomy
Software Suite (TheSky, CCDSoft, TPoint and Orchestrate).
The dozens
of images produced on both nights not only show the efficiency of the
system, but also the superior performance of the Paramount over other
commercially available telescope mounts.
Using
information provided by the telescope analysis software TPoint, the
Paramount was polar-aligned to within one arc-minute of the pole in each
axis during broad daylight. By offsetting from the sun, a TPoint
mapping run was completed using bright stars visible during the day.
As twilight
turned to dark, interested observers gathered to see this new
state-of-the-art system in action. Using an Accu-Focus
from the nearby What in the World
tent, the Celestron 11-inch was
quickly focused and ready for imaging.
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As darkness
fell and red flashlights filled the telescope field, the Paramount
captured dozens of beautiful images with pinpoint stars. Onlookers
expressed their thrill as the stunning images appeared on screen. Using an
Apogee AP-7 CCD camera with
24-micron pixels, Steve Bisque piloted the system for nearly five hours,
downloading one image after another, without ever touching the telescope.
As the Paramount
silently slewed the C-11 from
object to object, the gallery fired away questions like "Were all
these images taken tonight?" and "Are those really unguided
images?"
As he had
discussed the night before in his keynote speech at the International
Amateur/Professional Photoelectric Photometry (IAPPP) conference in Lake
Arrowhead, Steve Bisque covered the more difficult hurdles of CCD imaging.
"CCD
imaging can be a very laborious process. From polar-alignment to finding
and centering objects and then tracking during extended exposures, the CCD
imager must deal with many hurdles. The Paramount
GT-1100 system provides elegant solutions to these and many other
problems."
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"TheSky
and CCDSoft
with TPoint
Telescope Pointing Analysis Software provide
the best the industry has to offer for locating
and imaging an object, and the 11-inch research
grade gears from Edward R. Byers Company allow
for extended exposures, without the burden of
finding a guide star. By automatically
stamping each image with the object name,
equatorial coordinates, date, time and length of
exposure, among other important information, the
user is freed from this time consuming process
while the sky is clear."
Requests
from the crowd were taken until the wee hours of
the morning and the Paramount
GT-1100, with Byers 11-inch RA gear, was
happy to please.
Golden-based Software
Bisque is considered by many in the field to be
the leading astronomy software developer in the
industry. Its flagship software product, TheSky,
has gained a well-earned reputation as the most
sophisticated, elegant, yet easy-to-use
planetarium and telescope-control program.
Software Bisque has developed several software
extensions for TheSky, including CCDSoft,
Orchestrate, TPoint and AutomaDome.
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