Unexpected “More than 30 minutes before the mount reaches the meridian” Error During Sequencer Meridian Flip

[CarCarlo147]

Hi Robin,

after a couple of months without imaging due to weather, I ran again a sequencer that has always worked flawlessly. Twice (yesterday and today) I encountered an unexpected issue:
a step that normally reaches the meridian correctly and then performs the meridian flip is now failing, trying to initiate the flip 30 minutes too early.

The sequencer stops with the following error:

Code: Select all

Debug  	21:28:23.347269	#1 	Sequencer : Starting  : Meridian flip the mount (experimental)															in void SharpCap.Sequencer.SequencerContext.OnProgress(string e)
Error  	21:28:23.359090	#1 	Running step Meridian flip the mount (experimental) : Exception of type 'Exception' : More than 30 minutes before the mount reaches the meridian - this step must be run with the mount already within 30 minutes of the meridian 
Stack Trace:   at async Task SharpCap.Sequencer.Steps.MeridianFlipStep.ExecuteImplAsync(ISequencerContext context, CancellationToken cancellationToken) in C:/Documents/Source Code/SharpCap/src/SharpCap/Sequencer/Steps/MeridianFlipStep.cs:line 65
   at async Task SharpCap.Sequencer.Steps.StepBase.ExecuteAsync(ISequencerContext context, CancellationToken cancellationToken, bool internalUse) in C:/Documents/Source Code/SharpCap/src/SharpCap/Sequencer/Steps/StepBase.cs:line 135				in void SharpCap.Sequencer.SequencerContext.OnStepError(ISequencerStep step, Exception exception)

Log_2025-12-10T18_20_52-23072__.log

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[admin]

Hi Carlo,

it looks like the problem is that the flip is happening too early because the previous subroutine completes all 80 capture frames and finishes because of those frames being complete - it's not finishing because it is getting close to the meridian.

The 'STOP AT <X> FROM MERIDIAN' step will stop the enclosed steps early if the meridian is reached, but it doesn't extend the running of those enclosed steps to make sure you get to the meridian. The way to do that is to either use a loop inside the 'STOP AT' or to increase the number of frames to capture to a silly value like 8000 instead of 80. That will make sure that the capture will always take long enough to reach the meridian, avoiding the problem.

Hope this helps,

Robin