A plate solve when looking at Polaris is not a good ideea: the solver has a very hard time to distinguish between a 180° RA rotation and a 180° camera rotation. It might throw your scope completely out of sync. If you want to do the initial sync manually instead of the “slew to target” followed by the “center target” sequence, better slew the scope somewhere else first, using the motors.
Re. “just so SGP knows where it is pointing”: This is not necessary, as SGP does not keep track of where the mount is pointing. When SGP needs this information, it will either ask the mount where it thinks it is pointing or will start a plate solve as needed.
Dennis - slew to and center on was what I was doing previous that did not work. Thats when one target would center but another very nearby would be way off. The solution that worked was to blind solve at home position and then center on the target. Everything works fine now. Every plate solve is good.
Hi Horia - Thanks for the input.
I’ve seen before some saying plate solving looking at Polaris is not a good idea. But it works just fine for me and all plate solves are good now. Its what “fixed” the problems I was having. As I noted a few times in previous I was trying “slew to” and “center on” and even manual sync, which were not working. One target might center but the other didn’t, was way off. I now don’t have EQMOD retain sync points and blind solve first at home position and that works fantastic. Since doing this my scope/mount have not been out of sync at all but rather the opposite. Plate solving is working again for me and very accurately and well. Every target centers now, even the ones I had problems with prior. As for SGP knowing where it is, whatever it is that “needs to know”, doing a manual sync first would be achieving the same result as when I blind solving from home position. In my case the blind solve at home position is easier and effective.