Hi!
I am new to the forum and want to thank you all for the great hard work!
I have been configuring my Celestron CGEM with Ekos in KStars 3.5.9 and latest Indilib. Running on Kubuntu 20.04LTS.
Everything perfect except one thing, and I suspect I might be missing something:
I have set my HA limit at 0.67 hours, matching the 10 degrees limit set in RA on the CGEM Hand Controller.
Meridian flip is set at +5 degrees HA, so half that (20 minutes of margin). The Flip triggers correctly and happens succesfully, but after the flip, tracking is not restarted, because of error telescope hour angle is more than the maximum hour angle of 0.67, even though the mount is reporting the correct side of the pier, so this error should not trigger.
Am I missing something?
As a side note, I was curious to ask if there is an option to set the flip behavior to aborting current exposure instead of waiting for it to finish. That would allow me to set a lower gap between limits and Flip.
Thanks for your time!
I just wanted to apologize if you saw several threads with this text. The system wasn't notifying of the need for mod approval, so I thought my browser was dropping the form altogether. I deleted duplicates, and now this should be the only one. Any help on the topic is appreciated, and sorry again!
I don't know the mount, but to me it sounds like you have set a wrong limit: Not for the meridian flip, but for absolute pointing. So only use the hand controller to set a limit for the mount, but no HA limit in EKOS - only the one for meridian flip.
Thanks! Actually I did set both limits, the reason to use Ekos for tracking limit as well is that if I use the HC for tracking limit, when the limit is reached, the HC doesn't seem to report tracking stop, so I wanted to have Ekos handle that limit as well in addition to the flip grace.
My point is that tracking limit has nothing to do with meridian flip. It will not allow you to go to any position with an HA larger than your limit. Try (with that setting active) to slew to some object close to west horizon. You'll get the same error message.
The correct setting is to set EKOS to do MF at some HA, and (for security) set the mount/HC to stop tracking at some other, larger HA (e.g., in case kstars crashes or whatever). No[/ tracking limits in EKOS.
I agree with you, and thanks for validating my current setup (no track limits in ekos, HC as a safeguard), however just 2 quick points:
-The behavior is still strange because AFTER the flip, the HA should become negative for the object since we're tracking east side pointing west, so the limit shouldn't trigger again, it should trigger "after 24 hours" if you will.
-it would be preferred to have ekos limit as well, maybe even a degree or two before, since the mount won't report tracking has stopped, so if I reach the limit for a failed flip, resuming is not straightforward.
In any case, it's definitely a minor issue in terms of workflow since if everything is right you should never reach the limit, it should flip before then.
However, I find it strange that the HA stays positive (and against the limit) after a flip, when the mount is correctly reporting the pier side has changed.
No, hour angle is continuous from east (roughly -6h) to west horizon (~+6h). It doesn't change sign after an MF. The HA is a 'property' of an object (or rather, a celestial coordinate), and independent of how you observe it.
Check
Wikipedia
Edit: Hmm, I just read the tooltip for the HA limit. That seems to support your interpretation that it's related to MF and only applies when you're on the 'wrong' side. But that it stops rather supports my interpretation. Guess only a developer can answer this....
Ooh I am aware of the normal definition of HA, so Ekos is using that as well! Now I get it, what threw me off is this notation in the tooltip of the HA Limits checkbox:
"if the mount slews/tracks past the limit *while the Pier Side is in the state that does not allow that*, it shall be commanded to stop"
As you can see, it seems to allude to the fact that the limit is applied *only* if you're still on the west side pointing east (which would make sense)