TelRad Alignment

The first task is to align the TelRad for quicker starfinding. Note that adjustment of the secondary tilt for optical alignment purposes causes the TelRad to go out of alignment quickly. However, once the telescope has been polar aligned you should not need the TelRad again.

The outer ring through the TelRad sight is 1 degree, and the inner ring is 0.5 degrees. [Perhaps]

TelRad Alignment:

1. Identify a bright star on the sky that is above the horizon.

   This can be accomplished with a star chart or a knowledgeable individual. It will be necessary to know these coordinates for pointing model creation.

2. Move the telescope using rshift to point at the star.

   The star should be as close to the center of the TelRad as possible without taking too many iterations.

3. Take a short exposure of the star:

   rush> rshift -t               ; this starts tracking if it isn't already

   rush> rexpose -t 2 -n star1

   A couple of seconds is plenty of time to image a bright star. To view the image, open a separate terminal window and type something like the following:

   $ cd /rotse/data/3a1/        ; this could be 3b1, or 3c1 depending on the system

   $ ds9 date_star1_3a001.fit

   Hopefully the star is in the image! If it is not, then you just have to play around with jiggling a degree or so. If it is, then...

4. Center the Star on the CCD

   Move the telescope with rshift until the star is centered on the CCD. Remember, the field of view is ${1.9^\circ}$. Depending on the orientation of the camera, you will have to figure out which axes move the star in which direction. Once these have been discovered, a little post-it note with the axis orientations is helpful to affix to the enclosure monitor.

5. Record the star with rstarlog

   This star can act as the first star in the pointing model, so record its position to the log.

6. Adjust the TelRad

   Adjust the TelRad so that the laser sight is centered on the star, which is centered on the CCD. This will make the following steps much easier.