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Isotropic and anisotropic pointing models

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Abstract

This paper describes an alternative approach for generating pointing models for telescopes equipped with serial kinematics, esp. equatorial or alt-az mounts. Our model construction does not exploit any assumption for the underlying physical constraints of the mount, however, one can assign various effects to the respective components of the equations. In order to recover the pointing model parameters, classical linear least squares fitting procedures can be applied. This parameterization also lacks any kind of parametric singularity. We demonstrate the efficiency of this type of model on real measurements with meter-class telescopes where the results provide a root mean square accuracy of 1.5−2 arcseconds.

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Notes

  1. http://fitsh.szofi.net/

  2. http://fitsh.szofi.net/example/pointing/

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Acknowledgments

We thank the detailed review and the valuable comments of the anonymous referee. We also thank Emese Plachy and László Molnár the careful proof corrections. Our project has been supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences via the grant LP2012-31 as well as via the Hungarian OTKA grants K-104607, K-109276 and K-113117.

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Correspondence to András Pál.

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Pál, A., Vida, K., Mészáros, L. et al. Isotropic and anisotropic pointing models. Exp Astron 41, 1–15 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-015-9472-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-015-9472-z

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