Hello, this is my first post to this forum so please excuse my ignorance to Kstars and Ekos as I have just starting using this wonderful software about 1 month ago after using basic hand controller three star alignment and simple capture software and manual alignment style of basic astrophotography.

I have worked though my hardware issues and plate solving hang ups over the past couple of weeks, but have one issue that has me scratching my head.

I'll try my best to give clear and concise info on the issue: My equipment is the Orion Atlas EQ-G controlled by EQMod. I currently use Kstars 3.4.0 for Mac only because I couldn't get any newer version to recognize my Orion Starshoot Autoguider camera.

Here is my current process of getting the mount ready to image:

1. start up Kstars/Ekos and connect to equipment
2. Unpark Mount and start tracking
3. In Alignment Module click on Mount Model and use a three star alignment of named stars (I try to pick stars on both sides of the meridian that are also not close to the meridian)
4. Slew to intended imaging target, Capture and Solve with Slew to target.

Here is where I am having trouble. I have been imaging IC1396 over the past few nights. At this time, when darkness falls, IC1396 is past the meridian, but the mount is still instructed to slew to the object in a West point East side of the pier position. If I let it go ahead and have Meridian Flip @ 0.5 after angle hour 0 checked, Ekos will indeed pause the imaging plan, initiate a meridian flip, and resume the plan. The problem is that the mount never moves from it's current orientation. It stays on Western side of pier but acts like it is now on the eastern side. If you manually initiate a GOTO it will remain in the same position. I have even tried parking the mount and wiping the mount model and doing a new star alignment well into the night and it still slews to the IC1396 on the western side of the pier within an inch of mount crashing. Luckily I am using a camera/lens setup. A telescope would have crashed much earlier in the evening.

The Indi control panel is set to AUTO on mount position. I have tried to force an East facing West setting and the mount will GOTO the object using the Eastern side of pier, but the object will never center using plate solving, the error just keeps getting worse with each iteration.

The only time I have been successful in having the mount slew east facing west was when I did a star alignment and on the first star (which is always grossly out of alignment) loosen the RA clutch and swing the mount around much closer to the intended alignment star. Don't know why this worked but it did.

I feel quite certain this is my user error or some setting that I have wrong.... BTW checked Lat/Long, time, time offset, AUTO is set for pier side, I have assigned the park position using default/write commands

Jimmy

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