Their advantage lies in their compactness; larger telescopes can be accommodated in smaller domes. The complete payload can be used for instrument weight, no counterweight axis is needed. ALT AZ mounts, however, have to track in three axes (ALT, AZ and derotator at camera/eyepiece) which is technically more demanding but no longer a problem due to modern computer technology. The smaller ALT-AZ mounts are often used by amateurs and public observatories for visual observation. The larger ones are used for satellite tracking, where the alignment of the mount to the earth axis is not necessary or even disadvantageous.
When using N.I.N.A. together with the previous 10micron ASCOM driver, some users experienced issues related to UTC time handling. This could result in error messages within N.I.N.A. as well as incorrect or inconsistent UTC time information being passed from the driver to the software. The issue had also been discussed previously in the 10micron forum.
The cause has now been identified and resolved. An updated version of the ASCOM driver is available here:
https://forum.10micron.cloud/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2438
We recommend that all users working with N.I.N.A. via ASCOM who encounter connection or synchronization issues install the updated driver.
