Struggling to get Auto Meridian Flip to work on North side of Zenith

Forgive me if the following has already been asked and answered and sounds a bit novice.

A few of my favourite targets are the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635), The Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380), Fish Head Nebula (IC 1795), Heart Nebula (IC 1805) and the Soul Nebula (IC 1848). From my location, all these targets are visible all the time as they are all rotate around the NP (North side of the Zenith).

The ONLY problem I am facing with SGPro is that I must stay awake till the Hour Angle (HA) of the object passes 12h00m00 so I can do a manual pier flip. SGPro always shows the “Time to Pier Flip:” as NA when the HA of the object is between 0h00m00 and 12h00m00. When pointing anywhere South of the Zenith the Flip works perfectly.

Hopefully I am just missing a trick here but is there any way to get SGPro to do an automated pier flip when imaging targets, North side of the Zenith, around the NP after that target passes the HA of 12h00m00.

I have setup EQMOD SideOfPier as “Pointing (ASCOM)” and have tried “Physical”, “None(ASCOM)” and “V1.24g”. Only “Physical” shows a time to Pier Flip in SGPro but as a negative value when HA is before 12h00m00 and fails to even start the sequence in this case. I do not use a pointing model and my mount is the AZ-EQ6 GT.

If this is not possible then so be it and I’ll just live with this one and only issue I have with SGPro. Everything else works a charm and is by far the best product out there.

Thanks, in advance.

Mark

There should really be no difference north or south of zenith. The one exception to this is when you’re WAY north and under the pole. Things change below the NCP with respect to SideOfPier. Do you have any SGP logs that show this behavior?

Have you checked the lat/long/time/etc settings in your telescope? We use those to determine when we can flip as well. May just be a simple setting that is off.

Thanks,
Jared

Hi Jared

Thanks for the response.

If the object is ‘way north and under the NCP’ on the west side of the meridian, when the object passes the meridian onto the east side is when the flip does not occur and I must stress that this is the only time the auto flip does not work (for me anyway).

The telescope settings are correct(as far as I can tell) as eqmod syncs with a gps at session start. This is confirmed by ‘GPS Status’ app on mobile and when on the correct side of meridian, SGPro displays the correct time to pier flip.

Auto meridian flip works flawlessly everywhere else except on the occasion when beginning imaging ‘way north and under the NCP’ to the west of the meridian.

I will go through the logs tomorrow to see if I can find the log that relates to the time the scope just kept tracking way past the meridian (I have the flip set to 4 deg past)

Thanks again for getting back to me and not a biggy if can’t be sorted. A minor problem to live with.

Mark