Busy "Day" with the EdgeHD

Yes, the emphasis is on the word 'day'.

One of the unique capabilities of the Astro-Physics mount is that it can allow you to start your imaging session in the east with the counterweights UP.  Now that probably doesn't mean a whole lot to those of you who are not astro-nuts like me (and there are others of course who do get it). But one of the scary times of a long evening's imaging session is when the scope passes the meridian.

The meridian is an imaginary line that extends across the sky from due south to due north. It is the point where a German equatorial mount has to stop tracking, flip completely around to the other side of the pier, re-acquire the object it was tracking and then continue. Now I have had a relatively good success with my meridian flips. But even when they work you lose some precious imaging time while the scope re-acquires the object, and because the camera is now also flipped the post-processing gets a little trickier. When they don't work, the telescope stops tracking and you are done for the evening (if you are in bed).

But the Astro-Physics mounts allow you to start in the east with counterweights up, thus not requiring any flip. But there is a problem with this scenario - with the telescope essentially upside down the camera can find itself dangerously close to hitting the pier (or equipment that might be mounted on the pier). It has the issue when you are trying to image at high declination values (for you non-astro-nuts), that means directly overhead or to the north. So, we need to make sure that doesn't happen.

Astro-Physics APCC Users Guide

And that is what I did today. During the cool of the evening, while it was still light outside, I mapped out the whole allowable movement space of the mount for each declination 5 degrees at a time. With that data the mount has a mapping of the sky where the telescope is free to move without fear of striking the pier. A safe-zone so to speak. Took a bit of time, but well worth the effort.

Now, if only the skies would clear so I can try out this new capability.