ASiair Pro, NEQ6 and Meridian Flip questions

[tenpinmark]

I hope someone can help me out here as I don't quite understand something.

Tonight I managed to get going with my new ASIair Pro hooked up to my NEQ6. I polar aligned, slewed over to M33, got tracking going and started an image run that would take 3 hours. I saw that it said it was going to perform a meridian flip about 1.5 hours into the run which I could not work out why. The photo of the setup is pointing North, so the camera and scopes are on the East side and M33 would be above, but behind me if that makes sense. 

Anyhow, when the system decided to flip, it failed - see screen shot of the tablet. It just loops through this over and over again. The mount never moves and looking at the mount position and where it want to go, it would have been a very small move I expect.

I thought the mount would have rotated towards where I'm standing to take the photo (south of the mount) and for it to keep rotating towards the legs, then M33 would have been heading East(!?)

So, any ideas as to whats happening or have I got the whole concept wrong?  I have enabled the flip on the ASIair, but being very new to this, I may not have every setting correct.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Mark

 

[wimvb]

Make sure you set the flip to occur some time after the object transits (passes the meridian). Otherwise the mount can get confused, because of polar misalignment, cone error, etc. With your setup, you can safely track up to half an hour after transit.

[tenpinmark]

Thanks Wim for the information.  I'll look at how to extend past the transit. Must be a setting in the ASIair somewhere for this?

 

[wimvb]

It should be in the Mount or Telescope section. I don't have the asiair, so I'm not sure. But it would be the obvious place to start looking.

[tenpinmark]

I'm just getting used to all of this. I bought my first "true" deep space camera and waiting for my guide scope to arrive so I can ditch that awful Antars lump of junk which I;m use as a make shift guide scope. With such a bright full moon up there, I thought I'd take the opportunity to get used to the kit before the moonless clear night roll in 😆😆

I've managed to nail the polar alignment I think, guiding seems sorted, taking images is very simple, just need to sort out this flip so i can leave it overnight.