Ran into an odd issue with SGP when the first target in the sequence is near the meridian.
The mount is a Celestron CGX-L
The issue is that SGP would not successfully center the target. I watched as it failed to center several times. First attempt missed by around 2,000 pixels, second attempt missed by around 2,000 pixels. Watched it fail by 2,000 pixels at least 4 times.
Went out and looked at the hand controller and it stated it had reached the RA slew limits!
The CGX-L is capable of tracking up to -20 degrees past the meridian. I had mine set for -2 past. I changed that to -10 past and poof it centered on the first try.
My question is why did SGP, or the mount, decide to start the first target on the ‘wrong’ side of the pier?
I had a similar problem once. I arrived in Portal Arizona after 2 days of driving and got setup for my first night of imaging there under amazingly dark skies. I updated the location for the time zone in my laptop and it changed the time but it was off by an hour from my cell phone. I entered the time into Windows manually. That turned out to be a big mistake. It turned out that I was only about a half mile from the New Mexico border and the time on my cell phone was provided by a New Mexico cell tower. Arizona doesn’t do daylight savings time but New Mexico does which caused me to be off by an hour. I had similar symptoms to what you’re seeing. It’s probably a different issue but it blew a night for me under great skies so I hope this tale helps someone avoid the same error!
Hrm I will have to double check the time on my imaging laptop.
But I ran into a similar issue again last night while doing some Lunar imaging. SGP not even connected.
It kept trying to slew to the moon from the ‘wrong’ side of the pier. I have a slew limit set to prevent pier crashes and it would stop at the limits. Even if I manually moved the scope to the other side of the pier it would go back to the ‘wrong’ side when a slew to the moon was commanded.
Ended up ‘fixing’ that by setting the preferred side of the pier to East (from none).
Not sure why after at least a year with no issues all of a sudden this crops up.