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schmeah

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Posts posted by schmeah

  1. I suspect you would be more than happy with Avalon. My M Uno has served me well over nearly five years of ownership. It has been essentially maintenance free ( no gears to remesh or grease ), responds superbly to guiding, and has been reliable in every way. I’ve also not had any major issues with wind, though don’t image typically with winds > 10MPH. 

     

    Derek

  2. 5 hours ago, Filroden said:

    It's all too hypothetical still. Professional observatories all utilise alt/az but they can afford the kit needed to make it work. There are amateur alt/az mounts that can match mid-range EQ mounts for tracking but rotation remains the issue. That TSS mount can only derotate for up to 2 hours so it isn't great for long sessions. You can easily image for up to 2 hours on any EQ mount without need for a meridian flip so I don't see the benefit.

    What we need is either a derotator that can manage 10+ hours at high accuracy or for the prices of large CCD/CMOS sensors to drop to the point they can fully cover the image circle so derotation can be done in software.

    Until then the current equipment will give some improvements but not as much as the step up to an EQ mount.

    Meade made a field derotator some years ago that never took off, because of course it was a sloppy design that never worked well. But the idea is there and if done correctly, by a premium mount company, could permit a full night of uninterupted alt-az imaging. I once thought that commercially available fork mounts could never track/guide as well as a premium GEM. But now I have one in the Avalon. So maybe it just takes a commitment from an innovative company.

    Derek

    • Like 2
  3. 1 hour ago, SteveNickolls said:

    If I did win big Ian it would give me nothing but pleasure to order several such mounts for us all to use. 

    Fingers crossed now.

    Cheers,
    Steve

    British sarcasm is way too subtle for most of us yanks to fully comprehend. Now stop making fun of me ? And Merry Christmas all!

    Derek

    • Like 2
  4. 9 hours ago, Filroden said:

    It seems a very expensive way to remain alt/az. At that price point I'd be recommending going straight to an EQ mount that had a good polar alignment tool and easy/no meridian flip. After all, set up time and cost are probably the biggest differences between the two mount types. If you remove cost barriers, you can get easier set up EQ mounts.

    Alt/az is great for observation where rotation is irrelevant. It can also be used for photography if you know its limitations and can accept them. And we're showing you can minimise most of these. But they still remain. I love my mount but if I could spend that amount I would find a way to make EQ work for me than work the remaining issues with alt/az.

     

    Agreed. But let's say for the sake of argument that such a mount could  track and guide as well as a premium GEM of the same price and had an accurate derotator that would allow perfect alignment of subs without sacrificing any of the chip/FOV. And being alt-az it would not require a meridian flip nor accurate polar alignment. Why would anyone not prefer such a mount over a similarly priced  GEM?

     

    Derek

    • Like 2
  5.  Very impressive efforts with alt-az mounts. It has renewed my interes in alt-az imaging. But I've not been able to read this entire thread so I apologize if this has already been discussed. Has anyone seen the impressive imaging results with the TTS-160 Panther alt-az mount, both long exposure (I've seen up to twenty minute subs) using an OTA rotator, and very short subs using the low read noise CMOS ASI 1600? Not a cheap mount, but proof that high end imaging is possible with a commercially available alt-az mount.

     

    Derek

    • Like 2
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