Hold on a sec, did I miss something here? 8SE on a CG-4?

[jonathan]

I was just looking at weights and carrying capacities and noticed that (where I looked, anyway) the CG-4 has a weight capacity of 20lb, which I gather is about 9kg. I just weighed my 8SE with all but the diagonal and eyepiece, and it was a shade over 5kg. So, have I missed a trick here - could I have been using my 8SE on my CG-4 mount all along?

[John]

It would certainly be OK on a CG5 for visual. Not sure about the CG4 - possibly if you have the steel legged tripod. The C8 is a 2 metre focal length scope though which might be a challenge for the CG4 more than the weight.

[emadmoussa]

I think Celestron tend to give weird OTA-mount load proportionality. My C11 came with CG-5 synscan mount...I didn't need the mount anyway, but considering the C11 weights about 12Kg without all the accessories including diagonal/focuser or eyepiece I thought that mounting it on CG-5 was just a joke. I mean, come on...you don't need to weight anything to tell it's a bad combination -- just look how big the C11 in comparision with the CG-5...soft wind could drive things into chaos.

[jonathan]

Those proportions are about what the 8SE looked like when I tried it on my Omni CG-4 just now (it has the 1.75" steel legs). I'd say it was at least no worse than the original 8SE mount, perhaps slightly better, the vibrations seemed to dissipate much quicker even when focusing using the original knob and not my Baader Steeltrack focuser. Some parts of the 8SE did come into contact with the mount at certain angles though, probably because of the motors I have installed. I managed to balance the scope using only the supplied two counterweights and no extension bar. I didn't have my 9x50 finder scope attached but did have the 2" diagonal (which is light anyway) and a 25mm eyepiece.

Certainly usable (only tested in daylight so far) but I'm sure a C6 or C5 would work better on the CG-4.