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Using the Stellarium Interface
The EQMac software will listen on ports 10001, 10002, and 10003 for Slew, Sync, and Abort operations initiated from Stellarium. Unfortunately, at least for me, the Stellarium plugin configuration interface doesn’t work very well making it difficult to define telescopes to be controlled. For this reason, I have added a new section to the EQMac Preferences window to let you define your telescope and configure Stellarium automatically.
To configure Stellarium, make sure you DO NOT have Stellarium running. Open the EQMac Preferences window and select the Stellarium section. Type in a name for your telescope and leave the other settings alone. Click the Configure Stellarium button and you are done. Be aware though, that this will overwrite any previous telescope configuration you may have made within Stellarium.
Next start up Stellarium and open the Configuration window. Select the Plugins tab and choose Telescope Control from the list on the left. Make sure that the check box for “Load on Startup” is enabled. You can then close the configuration window.
If you have your mount connected to EQMac, you should notice that Stellarium shows the current position. If you select an object and press CMD+1, your scope should begin slewing to that object. You should see the scope location change in Stellarium as the slew sweeps across the sky. Once the slew is complete, you can align the object in your scope and press CMD+2 in Stellarium to perform a Sync on the chosen object.
It is best to either perform ALL your Sync operations from Stellarium, or ALL from the Sky Chart in EQMac. This is because there may be slight differences in the coordinates used in the two applications. If you have a mixture of Sync data from both applications, slews may not be accurate. Please also note that Sync data is not saved between launches of the EQMac application unless you park the mount before closing EQMac.
