Last night I was imaging NGC 7380. This morning I saw that the observatory had shut itself down. The error message at the bottom of the SGP window was "Sequence aborted (failed to meridian flip). I am using an AP 1600 mount and SGP has communicated with it without issues up to this point. I thought that I had the SGP configurations selected to enable meridian flip, but this is a new observatory and I am still relatively new to SGP. In fact, I think this may be the first time SGP has needed to perform a meridian flip. I am attaching a screen shot of the “Auto Meridian Flip” options window, as well as the log. I can’t seem to see where the problem is. Thanks in advance for taking a look!
Kent
sg_logfile_20170919204652.txt (1022.1 KB)
Do you have safety limits? I usually use minutes past meridian to flip. For my GM8 about 20 minutes. Your mount should actually track through the meridian also?
Regards,
Charlie
Thanks Charlie. I also have mine set to track about 40 minutes past meridian. I guess I assumed it would go ahead and flip at that point. I was hoping to flip and keep imaging, but I think I am missing something in the mount to software communication. I’ll look at the log again to see if I missed something. I am still trying to better understand the log. Thanks for your response
The reason I asked is that SGP is set to flip at meridian according to your
image.
Charlie
Hi Kent,
If you set SGP to flip exactely at the meridian (your “Meridian flip options” screen shows Minutes past meridian to flip = 0) might conflict with the following centering procedure by making the mount going back and forth around the meridian. You should set the “Minutes past the meridian” to be really past the meridian. Something like 5 or 10 min would be OK. SGP will the initiate the flip at that point.
The 40min limit you have set (I suppose in APCC) is just that: a safety limit. The mount should never go that far in normal operation.
By looking at your log, I see the following entry:
[09/20/17 00:21:58.709][DEBUG] [Telescope Thread] Auto center complete…
[09/20/17 00:21:58.840][DEBUG] [Center Scope Thread] Unable to achieve results below allowable error (50 px) in 1 attempts!
You should give the mount a seccond chance to center after the flip. I have mine set to 4 attepmts (Plate solve / Scope centering / Attempt to solve …)
Kind regards,
Horia
EDIT:
You should also activate the recovery procedure:
[09/20/17 00:22:10.671][DEBUG] [Pier Flip Thread] Something has gone wrong when centering after the meridian flip, but recovery mode is NOT active!
Horia and Charles, thank you very much. I think I have an idea now of what I need to do. I appreciate very much your help!
Best regards,
Kent
Another possibility
I have had several years of unfailing meridian flipping - until I started to play about with the settings…
With long subs, I found that, if I unchecked the wait for meridian box, the subs continued past the flipping point… I think because the flip would have contravened the limits on the other side. As soon as I enabled ‘wait for meridian’ it behaved itself, as it had done countless times before.
Thanks Buzz. I will try the “wait for meridian” option. Right now it is not checked.