SOFTWARE BISQUE:Paramount ME | AutomaDome | TheSky | CCDSoft | TPoint | Orchestrate
SB literally redesigned every component of the Paramount ME to optimize your efficiency, productivity and enjoyment while observing. In order to create the ME, we've assembled a world-class mount production and manufacturing staff at their facility in Golden, Colorado. combined, their team has over 50 years of telescope mount manufacturing experience. We've surrounded the "A-team" with state-of-the-art CNC machining stations and tooling. The result? An astronomical survey machine that actually blurs the line between professional and amateur astronomy.
The Paramount ME's control system uses brush-less DC Servo motors. If your mount is used for survey astronomy all night, every clear night, no other type of motor is sufficient. Note that the life of the brush-less DC servo motor is limited to the service life of the bearings. This translates to about 100,000 hours under normal operating conditions. On the other hand, the life of brushed DC Servo motors is limited to the life of the carbon brushes, which is anywhere from 4,000-10,000 hours according to the manufacturers specifications. Brush-less motors also do not "cog" at any rate. This ensures a smooth, constant output when tracking at the Sidereal rate. The Paramount's control system boasts state-of-the-art electronics for unmatched performance. MKS-3000 Features/Specifications:
Software The Paramount's mind becomes even more powerful when coupled with the TPoint Telescope Pointing Analysis Software. Providing repeatable pinpoint pointing accuracy, TPoint does the thinking so that you don't have to. TPoint learns the quirks and idiosyncrasies of your mount and your optical system, and it makes automatic pointing adjustments to help eliminate these inherent flaws. With TPoint, you no longer have to recalibrate, realign, or "re-synchronize" Each time you point the telescope to a new part of the sky or change a piece of equipment!
AutomaDome is an application that integrates with TheSky Astronomy Software to control robotic domes to keep the dome's slit synchronized with the telescope's optic AutomaDome computes the correct dome slit azimuth and elevation for any type of telescope, placed anywhere inside the dome. When used in conjunction with TheSky Astronomy Software's telescope control, your dome automatically follows the telescope, without human intervention.
Dome Geometry The following parameters are required to predict the azimuth and elevation of the dome aperture for any asymmetrically mounted telescope.
Description
Notes
Example GEM (German Equatorial Mount)
phi 0.6315 elevation of roll axis
Dome Application Programming Interface (DomeAPI)
Imagine The Power Of The Finest Observatory In The World. Now, Capture It On Your Own Personal Computer With TheSky. PC and Mac Compatible.
TheSky Astronomy Software for PC and Macintosh. An on-line astronomy tutorial also helps you learn terminology and understand many astronomical concepts. For example, enter the word "precession" for a detailed discussion of this topic. The tutorial also comes with scores of informative illustrations. Navigate the Heavens from Your Desktop: Dozens of commands make it easy to view any area of the sky. To display the night sky as it appears from your location, click the North, East, South, West and Zenith buttons. TheSky presents a wide-angle view to quickly identify each constellation and bright object. Buttons on the Orientation toolbar or keyboard pan the display up, down left and right. To zoom in, simply darg a small box around the desired area with the mouse. The new area automatically redraws on your screen with fainter objects now visible. It's like using a telescope to magnify a particular area of the sky! The Move To function provides an on-screen graphic for rapid selection of the desired destination in either horizon-based (altitude-azimuth) or equatorial (right ascension-declination) coordinates. The exact coordinates to move to can also be entered. Finding and Identifying Objects: Find any object in the database by entering its name in the Find dialog box. Thousands of cross-references are available. For example, you can find the Whirlpool Galaxy by typing "whirlpool," "M51," or "NGC 5194." Fuzzy searches work too - typing "casseeopia" finds Cassiopeia! Search for stars by their Bayer/Flamsteed numbers, common name or catalog designations (SAO, GSC, Hipparcos etc.) Click any on-screen object to display a wealth of information, including the object identification, equatorial and horizon-based coordinates, and rise-transit-set times. Non-stellar objects include additional information such as size, position angle. NGC and IC objects include the Dreyer description translated into clear descriptions. The Multimedia tab provides access to images, sound and other information that is available for the displayed object. You Have Celestial Control: You have complete control of the objects displayed. Select by any combination of object type and magnitude. For example, you can limit the display to galaxies between magnitudes 10 and 11. The Stellar Options dialog varies the appearance of star fields. Adjust these parameters to vary the stellar size and brightness to make the computer display resemble a photograph, CCD image or the sky as it appears to the unaided eye. Display stars using their spectral colors. Two levels of plotting density are available. Low Density displays fewer objects on the screen for rapid plotting, scrolling and zooming. High Density displays all available objects. In dense areas, as many as 100,000 objects are plotted on the screen at once so you can actually see the Milky Way! Computer Driven Telescopes: TheSky can be used to control many computer-driven telescopes, such as the Paramount GT-1100, the Celestron Ultima 2000 and NexStar series, the Meade LX200 and ETX EC series, those supporting the Astronomical Command Language (ACL), and other custom systems. When one of these systems is used with TheSky, pointing the telescope to the desired object becomes as simple as clicking the Slew To button. "Real-time" cross hairs on the computer screen show exactly where the telescope is currently pointed. Controls are also available for slewing, jogging and focusing. Features to Satisfy a Wide Range of Users: TheSky comes in "levels" that include different amounts of data and feature sets. Nearly 19,000,000 stars and other objects are included with each level. This includes solar system objects, Hipparcos? Tycho data and the Guide Star Catalogue (GSC). In addition to providing many thumbnail images, Level IV supports all of the advanced features that involve interaction with other Software Bisque products. Comets and Minor Planets from the Web: Orbital elements for many active comets and 40,000 minor planets are supplied. Downloading a list of active comets and critical minor planets from the web is just a mouse-click away. Our web site is also frequently updated with new comet and minor planet data. Any number of minor planets can be computed and displayed, then labeled with any combination of name, magnitude and position. Easily select any of the minor planets from the list of over 40,000 and include them in time-skip animations to show their motion over time. Minor planet position calculations are extremely accurate, making TheSky the best choice in tools available today for locating and identifying minor planets. Beautiful Deep-Sky and Planetary Images: The CD-ROM contains thousands of images. Included are 200x200 thumbnail images of all NGC and IC objects that automatically appear in the Object Information dialog. Images of over 250 other deep space and solar system objects, plus over 100 images from the spectacular David malin collection are included. Support for the Digitized Sky Survey: Working closely with the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Software Bisque created RealSky View (available from SCS Astro), the software for accessing the Digitized Sky Survey included with the RealSky data. We took it one step further by providing access to this fantastic data set through TheSky's interface. It is as simple as centering on the area of interest, then pressing a button to view that portion of the sky as imaged using the 48-inch Oschin Schmidt Telescope. Both the 102 CD-ROM (10:1 compression), and the 8 CD-ROM North and the 10 CD-ROM South (100:1) compression sets are supported. Take a Ride On a Comet: Using the interactive three-dimensional Solar System View you can put yourself on a comet or minor planet with a single mouse click. Using the time-skip toolbar, sit back and watch as you zoom through the solar system. You can also add orbit paths to help visualize their trek through the solar system. The "Orbit Depths" function provides a clear view of how far an object migrates from the ecliptic. A single mouse-click toggles between a perspective view of the solar system and the Earth-based view, providing an informative look at the geometry of the solar system. Customize Your Sky: TheSky is extremely flexible, and fully customizes its Sky Display on command. Remove menus and status bars if you want so the screen appears as a "window to the sky," or select Chart Mode to make the screen resemble a printed colour star chart with a white background. Virtually every object that appears on the Sky Display - and on printed charts - can be customized to your liking with the Preference Dialog. The default object symbols and colour schemes provided result in truly magnificent sky displays. The dockable toolbars let you zip through common tasks. They can be displayed horizontally or vertically and can be placed anywhere on the screen. The Status Bar shows any of the following - Screen Position, Cursor Position, Earth Location, Field Width, Telescope Position, Date, or Time. Screen Labels and Reference Lines: To keep from getting lost in space, select any combination of object labels and reference lines. Choose which celestial objects show a corresponding label. For example, you can label stars and non-stellar objects with their common names. Extended Labelling lets you add any field from the databases to your charts. You can also choose the font type and colour for each label category. The following reference lines are included: constellation lines and boundaries, equatorial coordinate grid, horizon coordinate grid, horizon line (including refracted horizon), the ecliptic, the galactic equator and the Milky Way. The horizon line can be edited to show all of the sky obstructions from your site. The coordinate grids are auto-scaling at any magnification and labelled with coordinates. Equatorial grid spacing can be set automatically or defined by the user. Custom Charts: TheSky gives you the power to create beautiful printed output of what you see on the screen. Print charts to any Windows-supported printing device or to a disk file. using today's colour printing technology, you can create breathtaking colour charts suitable for publication. The Export and Copy to Clipboard commands create star charts as Windows metafiles (not simple bitmaps). These vector-based charts can be imported to any application that supports metafiles. Full resolution is maintained and charts can be scaled and edited. This feature makes TheSky the most popular star chart generator for astronomy club newsletters and other third-party star chart products. Animate Celestial Motion: You can select solar system objects (including comets and minor planets) for animation, and perform animations in either equatorial or horizon-based coordinates. watch the retrograde motion of Mars, the path of the Sun during the year (creating the analemma), or the Moon graze the solar disk during a partial eclipse. You can even adjust the sky display after the skip is performed to center the area of interest and print the event. Select Trails to show the path of each object as it moves. Reset, forward and reverse commands make it easy to replay any event. On-Screen Field of View Indicators: Experiencing a one-to-one correspondence between a compter display and the actual night sky via observing or photographic techniques is difficult. TheSky makes it easy. The on-screen Field of View Indicators overlay a variable-sized circle and/or rectangle (specified in arc-minutes) to show the relative field of view of any telescopic eyepiece, CCD detector area or film are. The field of view indicators appear on printed star charts, too. Beautiful Sunrise and Sunset Simulations: Generate breathtaking simulations of the blue to orange transition of the dusk and dawn skies. You will see the daylight sky give way to a beautiful orange sunset. Then watch as the stars slowly appear and twilight gives way to darkness and the horizon fades to black. A Storehouse of Useful Tools: The Eclipse Finder searches for lunar and solar eclipses. Quickly and easily show each eclipse on the Sky Display to see an animation. The Jovian Moons Display shows the positions of Jupiter's Galilean moons at any moment. The moons can be set into motion with both overhead and side (telescope) views shown. The Moon Phase Calendar prints calendars for any month showing the phase of the moon for each day. Advanced Features Available in Level IV:
TheSky Student Edition's For Windows And Macintosh. Features:
 Software Bisque CCDSoft A Friendly, Dependable Tool. As an experienced observer, you know the necessity of dependable equipment, and this applies to your software as well. Nature provides enough obstacles - you don't want your software to become another one. CCDSoft was written and tested by experienced observers. Hundreds of hours testing under actual observing conditions provided the insight for developing the CCDSoft user interface to ensure that you spend your time gathering data instead of fumbling in the dark. CCDSoft is charting a new course for astronomical image processing software by combining power with ease of use. At one star gathering, we left our computer momentarily unattended and came back to find two 10 year olds taking images!
CCDSoft supports many different image file formats including: All SBIG file formats (ST-4 through ST-8), ARN, BMP, RLE, DIB, EPS, IMG, PDS, GIF, JPEG, LNX, PCX, PCT, PCD, TGA, TIFF, WPG.Image and Track at the Same Time In the past, those interested in taking long exposures were required to sit at the telescope for the duration of the photograph, manually adjusting controls. With the advent of the CCD autoguider, much of the difficulty is removed by letting the CCD monitor and adjust the telescope's drive system. CCDSoft takes this one step further by controlling TWO CCD's simultaneously, one for tracking on a star, the other for imaging objects. Image Browser The image browsing portion of CCDSoft allows you to create lists of images by selecting them from directories, then viewing these lists as a slide show - continuously, or image by image. As your image database grows, you'll want to use the Browser for easy access to them - and to show them off! Imaging Modes While focusing your camera on a bright object you can define which portion of the CCD detector you want to download - simply drag a rectangle on an image to define the portion of the detector to aquire. This dramatically reduces download time.
Telescope Pointing Analysis Software for use
To learn more about the hearyt of TPoint and the fundamental issues involved in telescope error modeling, visit the author's home page at http://tpsoft.demon.co.uk. TPoint: An Advanced Telescope Analysis System Combined with TheSky Astronomy Software, TPoint provides you with all of the tools you need to efficiently analyze and improve the polar alignment and the pointing performance of your computer-driven telescope. Using TheSky and TPoint in concert, you can rapidly select, target, and log telescope pointing data. TPoint can then graphically display the data in different formats to quickly reveal important characteristics of your telescope. After learning the inherent quirks and idiosyncrasies of your telescope, mount and optics, TPoint can automatically compensate for them, thus improving your telescope's pointing performance. TPoint even has an advanced analysis capability that enables you to determine axis misalignments, polar misalignment, gear errors, and more. Support for Many Types of Telescopes You can use TPoint to improve the pointing accuracy of many types of commercial computer-driven telescopes, including the Celestron Ultima 2000, the Meade LX200 Series, and those supporting the Astronomical Command Language (ACL). TPoint also fine-tunes the pointing of the Paramount ME Robotic Telescope Mount. TPoint in Action At Software Bisque, they use TPoint to analyze and improve the pointing accuracy of all their computer-driven telescopes, but TPoint is also being used at some of the world's great observatories. For example, TPoint maintains the pointing models and monitors the performance of the Keck, UKIRT, and UKST telescopes (among others), and it is currently being used to make the Anglo-Australian Telescopes point to one arc-second - about the angular size of one of Jupiter's moons as viewed from earth!
Imagine generating tri-color images, searching for comets, minor planets, supernovas or monitoring variable stars, without ever touching your instruments. Orchestrate (when used with TheSky and CCDSoft) makes it possible! Orchestrate installs the necessary components on your computer so that you may also write scripts using Visual Basic, VisualScript or JavaScript to automate your data acquisition process! Orchestrate is a Windows application that works in conjunction with TheSky Astronomy Software and CCDSoft CCD Astronomy Software to allow unattended, scripted operation of robotic telescopes and CCD cameras. The entire nature of your observing system changes when these applications are combined using Orchestrate. To give you an idea of how powerful this suite of software is, note that before it was officially released, three Orchestrate users discovered ten super novae! Orchestrate goes beyond unattended control of telescopes and CCD cameras. Your interactive sessions also benefit due to the flexibilty and ease with which you can repeat operations or creat custom observing scripts. Scripts consist of simple commands and arguments. For example the command, SlewToObject NGC 7713 will instruct the telescope to slew to the coordinates of NGC 7713. To make it even easier, TheSky Level IV features a data export utility that makes creating scripts a breeze. In a matter of seconds, you can create a script that will automatically image all galaxies with a desired magnitude limit in the area of sky that is available. Additionally, operations that are taxing to humans, or simply difficult to acomplish rapidly, can be relegated to the computer. For example, slewing the telescope to a satellite, then quickly taking an exposure before the satellite has moved is difficult to acomplish interactively. Orchestrate makes it easy. Super novae and minor planet searches are two examples of space surveillance that are greatly aided by automation. Using TheSky's built-in Orchestrate script generator, mosaic grids can be generated so that Orchestrate will systematically image a given area of the sky with a specified overlap. Your telescope and CCD camera can generate your own sky survey, while you sleep!
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TheSky Student Edition
