EQ-5 Collision

[Cosmic Geoff]

I had an odd event with my EQ-5 Synscan last night. I was using it to image EEVA-style some galaxies in Coma Berenices, east of the meridian. All good till I commanded it to find one with an azimuth of over 170 degrees (i.e. just east of the meridian), and a lower altutude.

The mount proceeded to do  a meridian flip, and I did not realise anything was wrong till I found that stars on the laptop screen continued to trail, accompanied by some odd noises. Eventually I spotted the problem with the aid of a torch - the declination motor, now on the east side and below the declination axis, was colliding with a couple of connectors on the fixed box on the east side of the mount. 

I recovered it by commanding it to go to another object. The mount continued to function, but now needing a platesolve & resync to find objects. Anyway, it was now aiming on the other side of the meridian from the two alignment stars.

I have been using the mount for over a year and have never had this happen before. I thought this kind of thing couldn't happen. And why did the mount flip itself before reaching the trigger point of 180.0 deg azimuth? And what can I do to stop it happening again, other than keeping a wary eye on what it's doing?

 

Edited April 22, 2022 by Cosmic Geoff
Image

[Cosmic Geoff]

A comment that you have not had this problem with your EQ-5 Synscan would be useful.  The picture above shows the mount in the collision position.

[newbie alert]

You can set slew limits on the handset of most mounts, you should be able to switch off  automatic meridian flips in the handset but I'd advise to keep them on and adjust the slew limits

[Franklin]

I'm only visual but a similar thing happens with the Dec motor getting in the way around the meridian. If I know I'm going to be pointing around that position I spin the Dec round 180 deg so the motor is on the other side. Don't know how that would effect goto mounts, probably have to do a re-alignment.