Fist Automated Meridian Flip!

[kor]

I successfully did my first SGP controlled meridian flip last week at the Texas Star Party!

At home, I never image past meridian, because there’s a big city over there. And up to now, I’ve had too many cable issues to allow an unattended flip. But the Eagle2 Pro fixed the cable issue and there’s no big city West of Fort Davis (well El Paso is a couple hundred miles over there), so I told SGP to go ahead and try it. The first night, it failed because I’d set the laptop’s time zone to “Central America” instead of “Central Time” and it kicked off an hour early and tripped my limit switch just before running the camera into the pier.

By the next night, however, I’d discovered that I was in Texas, rather than Panama, and corrected the time zone. The meridian flip worked perfectly!

Thanks, again, Ken and Jared for such an outstanding program!

• Shane

[midnightlightning]

Well done Shane!

I remember a time when I didn’t image past the meridian because it was too much hassle, then I started doing a flip manually, then I got PHD to do it - that was one of the most satisfying achievements ever (not that it was that actually difficult in itself, just that I was trying to learn so many other aspects of astro imaging at the same time!)

Odd that even though its pretty routine now, and I monitor my imaging sessions in the lounge whilst watching tv (team viewer), I still like to go outside and watch the flip. Ok, partly because I worry about a cable snag or other failure, but mainly because its just a joy to watch