Software that calculates the necessary dome azimuth and shutter altitude to allow a telescope to "see' through the center of the dome opening. This software has been developed by John Oliver based upon algorithms by Chris Lord and Toshimi Taki (see http://www.brayebrookobservatory.org/BrayObsWebSite/HOMEPAGE/BrayObs.html ).
The GUI allows entering the applicable parameters of the dome and telescope mount and then generates a curves representing the necessary dome azimuth and altitude for a specific declination and hour angles from -12 hours through +12 hours.
As illustrated above, repeated plots can be made. DomeSync will cycle through a series of up to 14 colors. The "Clear" button can be used to clear accumulated plots. A non-zero rDecAxis results in modeling a GEM (German Equatorial Mount) and it is necessary in this case to indicate whether the telescope tube is east of the pier (thus looking west) or west of the pier (looking east).
The geometry used is defined as shown here:
Please note that this software is under continued development and no error checking has yet been incorporated. In particular, pier parameters that place the telescope outside the dome may give poor results. Please let me know if you have questions or problems.
Click the following link to download DomeSync and all VB support
files: setup.zip
Unzip the file and run setup.exe to install DomeSync and the neccessary
support files.
[latest revision posted July 6, 2003 1700; (about 2.8Mbytes)]
If you just need the exe file then here it is: DomeSync.exe
[latest revision posted July 6, 2003 1700; (about 331 Kbytes)]
If you have Visual Basic 6, download the source code and see how it works.:
DomeSyncSource135.zip
[latest revision posted July 6, 2003 1700; (about 47 Kbytes)]
This page is maintained by John
P. Oliver; write me at oliver@astro.ufl.edu
This material is being made available to you subject to a variety of caveats.