First time to use SGPro in several weeks, so thought I would get up in the wee hours of the morning to make sure the scope performed a meridian flip at the assigned time. Was imaging IC1795 - the fishhead - and the transit time was approximately 3:09 CST in my area. Got up at 3 AM - wend out to watch - it hesitates around that time, the proceeds to continue taking exposures - blowing right past the flip time. The timer in the bottom right-hand corner went negative - -5:30 minutes and I was doing 5-minute subs. Took one, then promptly started another - at this time 6-7 minutes past transit time. So, I paused the sequence, did a manual flip, used SkyX Pro to plate solve, and resumed imaging with SGPro. Went back to bed…
When the sequence stopped at 6:15 the flip timer indicated it was -3:02:04 past the meridian. How does that happen? If the clock/time goes negative, isn’t that a good check/time to know there’s a problem? My scope would have been into the mount for 3 hours if I hadn’t checked on it - well, maybe my safety limit would have prevented it…still…
Here’s the link to the error log and sequence file. The error log makes reference to the fact that it’s waiting to do a meridian flip, it just never does…
I would really like to trust this software and sleep at night! Thanks!
Jan - what are your settings for flipping? The only time I went past the flipping point was when I unchecked the ‘wait for meridian’ option. I was doing long subs at the time and I guessed it was because flipping early would have caused an issue on the other side but I never really bottomed out the root cause. (It does occur there might be a logic flaw- in which having declined an early flip (say with 20 min subs) before 20min past the meridian, whether SGP stops checking subsequently for flipping parameters - but as I say, I have never sat about trying it out to test my theory)
I think you may, in effect, have the same issue as me, in so much that SGP thinks twice of slewing to the opposite side due to a potential clash - I’m betting, if you made that 5 or 10 minutes past meridian, it will all work. As it is - putting zero is probably a boundary condition that is best avoided. Things directly on the meridian can sometimes get confused (like sync points).
Thanks - I will try that. I thought about the ‘0’ causing an issue. I see in that the program is addressing the meridian flip, but I get impatient waiting so I just cut to the chase and did it myself.
So - in my system, the mount software has limits of about +/-40 minutes (10 degrees) and I set SGP to 10 minutes and to wait for the flip point. My longest sub is 20min long, so I should never create a condition where I create a foul on the opposing side. I use this all the time and it works. I once disabled the ‘wait’ option and with long subs, it went past the flip point and I, like you, did not wait for it to hit the stop and manually intervened.
It is important to check the mount settings (in my case within TheSkyX) to ensure there is no conflict.
What seems to happen if you choose a point that’s too close to the meridian is that while SGP thinks the meridian has been passed the mount doesn’t. The result is that when SGP attempts to do the meridian flip slew it doesn’t happen. The mount stays on the same side of the meridian and SGP reports that the flip has failed.
If I was writing SGP I’d record that, then continue imaging and try again after the next frame. And so on. I might have a limit after which I would give up but I’d keep trying to do the slew to the other side of the meridian several times before that.
I had been imaging over 5 hours on the east side of the meridian before the flip was needed. So, it was not a session that had been started at the point of the target (fishhead) even close to the meridian, if I understand correctly your point.
No, but the majority of our time is being spent on getting 3.0 out the door.
As for your flip. It looks like something might not be right with your mount location or time settings. SGP seems to think that your mount is about 80 degrees away from the meridian.
