Hi everyone

So this is something quite strange as I have a lot of not (optimal) settings to combat some (issues).

The Celestron AVX has a feature to keep imaging across the meridian up to 20 deg. This is really a nice feature, as you can balance your mount to have East Heavy Balancing and get more use of it before you have to flip. On some targets you might not want to image much further than 20 deg past meridian depending on the alt of the target at that time, so all in all a good feature, but I can not use it!

With the design of my observatory I need the mount to be parked 'flat', pointing on ~182, 1 (az alt). If I let the mount pass the meridian with 20deg then the parking position would randomly be on the east or left side of the observatory. (as 182 can be reached from either side if the scope is allowed to pass the meridian). I will soon install a light source for flats that makes it so the scope has to park on the east side. To force this to be true I have set the settings in the AVX to allow for imaging 0 deg past the meridian.

Not sure that any of this is to blame, but when I'm imaging and the scope reaches the meridian the scope stops tracking. Guiding stops, and if I'm imaging there is a lot of trails due to no tracking. So then I should be able to wait until the object I'm imaging to pass the meridian (wait a minute or so), then slew to the same object and the scope will flip. This does not work. The scope stays on the east side of the meridian even if I issue slew commands. It looks like it tries to slew to the target without flipping but fails as its not allowed to pass the meridian. The reason I mentioned the settings above about the possibility to slew 20 deg past the meridian is because it takes 20 minutes before I can slew to the object I'm imaging and the result is a meridian flip.

One way I know of fixing this, is if it was possible to set the 'Meridian' option in the driver. The AVX has a meridian option that you can set to 'Prefer Current | Prefer East | Prefer West' By setting this it is possible to tell the mount to do the flip even if it thinks it can continue to image across the meridian. I would have to change it back before parking, but then I would not miss 20 min imaging every time a object passes the meridian.

Anyone know of another way to fix this, or if the Meridian option in the AVX is even documented? If someone has any tips on how to make this work, then please let me know.

Magnus