Moving your meridian to avoid pier flips

[Euan]

Most of my view is towards the west, I can only get a short amount of time on a target before I hit the dreaded pier flip. Now this in theory is OK as my setup can do this and do a plate solve to sort out the pointing, but as my light pollution is really bad the biggest problem is gradients will then flip their position mid way through the subs.

I can get the majority of the view on the east while still having the scope on it's east side, but of course doing a goto in this position flips the scope back onto the west side pointing east, awaiting a flip when it gets the meridian.

I've just read about a neat little trick on the EQMOD tech group. If you set your longitude differently, you can effectively move your meridian east or west, depending on how you set it. OK you will have to re-do pointing, park positions, limits, etc, but this sounds like an nice little workaround.

Anyone actually tried it or is it totally bonkers?

[adamsp123]

Isn't there a danger that the scope will crash into the pier?

[Euan]

Isn't there a danger that the scope will crash into the pier?

Not if you set the limits up right, you will still be slewing to the same targets in the same place in the sky, it's just that the place where EQMOD expects to flip the mount will have moved

The only downside I can think of is that your Home position changes for pointing, but once the pointing is set it should work OK (in theory)

EDIT: Just thought of another. The sunrise / sunset times change as well, but this will only effect planetarium software and can be fixed simply by switching off the daylight effects