The dome system consists of two motors to drive the dome, a motorized opener for the shutter, an encoder for dome movement, a position sensor and a VITRAX microprocessor.
The dome shutter motor is controlled with a standard garage door transmitter, located in the dome to the left of the dome entrance door. Press the open button, usually twice to activate the motor. The dome will automatically stop when fully opened or closed.
The dome positioning system consists of a micro-controller, the VITRAX, located in the chart room , a position sensor, located behind the north end of the polar axis, a magnet mounted on the dome that closes the previous sensor, and a position encoder, located above the VITRAX. The VITRAX gets commands directly from the flwo60 TCS60, which reads telescope position from the PC-TCS. If any of these quit communicating, the dome may not track the telescope. A reset switch is located in the chart room.
Please try to move the dome manually with the switch on the wall before proceeding!
If you need to exercise the dome, e.g., if there is an ice or snow buildup on it, you may need to jog the dome back and forth. This is usually done in the daytime, so you should generally not attempt this at night. There is an rtshell command to do it: jogdome (it prompts you for parameters, or uses defaults if you like them).