iKarus Stellar Mate Plus, User Manual

Page: 80 / 227

The StellarMate Plus Manual
80 / 227
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.
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