Use the STAR catalog to find bright stars, multiple stars, named common stars, and planets from Mercury to Pluto. Simplify Magellan operation by using the large back lighted keypad for data entry and object selection. Control the movement of your telescope from the direction keys on the Magellan II switch panel. Illumination is variable from bright to none in 16 levels. The Magellan system is quite simple in its basic operation.
All telescopes have two axes rotation that are perpendicular to each other.
By rotating the telescope on these axis the user can point to any object in the sky. Telescopes with clock drives, like the Meade Starfinder Equatorial, have the axis of rotation such that rotation about the celestial pole is possible. Magellan is a sophisticated microprocessor system that is programmed to understand the relationship between the moving sky and Polar configurations of a telescope. For the Magellan to operate properly, it must have information about where the telescope is pointing. This is done by installing encoders on both telescope axes of rotation.