The StellarMate Plus Manual
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Meridian Flip
You can do a Meridian Flip from the Mount Module.
Equatorial mounts flip after crossing the meridian in order to prevent the imaging
equipment train from hitting the tripod. With Ekos, you can set an hour angle limit
which if exceeded, the mount will be commnded to flip. The mount must begin
tracking east of the meridian in order to the meridian flip to be commanded in
Ekos.
When commanding a meridian flip, Ekos will suspend the autoguiding process and
waits until the mount completes the flip. Once the mount begins tracking again
post meridian flip, Ekos will plate-solve and make any necessary slew commands
to bring the mount to the exact location it was tracking prior to the flip.
Next, it will automatically capture a frame and select a suitable guide star,
performs calibration, and resumes autoguiding. If In-Sequence focuing is enabled,
it will also capture and focus a suitable star. It then resumes the capture process
form where it left.
All these steps are completely automated and require no user intervention!
So just set when you want the meridian flip to occur at the mount module.
Remember that the setting is in Hour Angle (HA). 1 HA = 15 degrees, therefore
0.1 HA = 1.5 degrees West of the Meridian.
Always use a positive value to ensure proper meridian flip takes place. Using zero
could theoretically work but it is at the very edge where the decision to flip or
not is made by the mount, so it's safer to use a slightly higher value like 0.1 HA.
4.5.2.6 Observatory
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