Mick,
It makes sense to me the explanation that they gave you. Bit of a shame that it was not mentioned in the Change Log for the firmware that it only works for AZ Mode.
In relation to the tracking (I may be wrong, but it is my working understanding) the mount provides for different tracking rates. The three main ones are Sidereal, Solar and Lunar.
- Sidereal - Deep Sky/Stars. Basically anything with an RA/Dec on the Celestial Grid (J2000). Can probably use for some distant planets if you wanted to, but the mount will automatically select Solar Tracking for planets. This rate is about 99.7% that of the Solar Rate or about 1 degree of difference per day.
- Solar - Sun and Planetary Bodies.
- Lunar - Moon. This is the fastest of these rates as the moon moves quicker in the apparent sky.
There would be nothing stopping you doing a pretty darn good setup in EQ mode to start with, doing no alignment and just using the GoTo. You would obviously need to re-center the target, but at least the tracking mode is selected/changed and should give you at least a decent amount of time before it wanders off. If you ask me, the only thing worth your while setting up for would be the Sun, but I would not expect you to get the 1.5hrs or so that I can get in AZ mode.
There are two other rates which would be beneficial depending on your interests, but the mounts are not programmed for this and computer software starts to come into play. These are for Comets and Satellites.
Just my food for thought. Hope that at least maybe explains your question?
Joel
