its a goto but does it have to be goto?

[the bishop]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could help and tell me if a Skywatcher EQ5 SyncScan GoTo mount has the ability to be used as a manual mount?

Can for example the motor gears or drive train be disengaged or overridden or some such?

Or does it always have to be used as a fixed and powered GoTo mount?

For whatever reason, be it a power loss or just plain wanting to use it manually.

Thanks

[adrianelliott]

Yes, on an EQ5 you can disengage the clutches and use it as an undriven mount. This is not the case with all mounts, for example you can't do it with the Celestron Nexstar range as far as I know.

[Capricorn]

There should be a clutch that can be released to move the scope round, however this is a coarse movement and will place the scope in an approximate position. Then normally you would look through the finder or scope and accurately centre the object.

The problem is I suspect that the manual movement controls are replaced by the motor drive so no manual movemant bits.

The other option is to set the mount up as in polar aligned and simply use the handset to drive the mount to whereever you want to go this would also keep the object in view a bit longer which is a big part of observing. Does need power however.

Does strike me a bit like wanting to have and use a car without starting the engine.

[the bishop]

thats great

thanks very much

gra

[the bishop]

engine whats an engine? its all sheep power here. :grin:

i was just wondering if it would be stuck in the case of a power loss.

thanks

gra

[Tim]

No, you'd be able to return it to where you wanted simply by loosing the clutches. You would however lose the alignment and park position info in the mount handset in the case of sudden power loss.

Manual mounts have handles on to turn the RA/DEC axis, and you dont get this kind of fine tuning with the powered mounts, however the handsets themselves can be adjusted for speed and be very very accurate without touching the mount or scope, which is a bonus when viewing small objects at long focal lengths, where the slightest wobble can send the target out of view.

[the bishop]

thanks everyone

im very grateful as

my question has been answered

[Cornelius Varley]

If you download the latest Synscan firmware there is a menu option that allows you to control the mount as a Syntrek / Supatrak mount without the need to perform a star alignment. You still get the fast slew rates so there is no need to disengage the clutches a manually slew the mount.

[the bishop]

once again everyone im in your debt

thanks