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Celestron Advanced VX mount


Rudeviewer

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Hi all, though I would give the share my first experience of the advanced vx mount. 

it took me only a few minutes to get this think unboxed and ready to go with scope attached.  Very easy setup which means portability.  As I only carry the thing out my back door I had it all put together and moving it was a breeze still.  Once outside it took me a mere 5 minutes to get it to where I had the counterweight adjusted and aligned towards polaris.  Used a two star align to start with.  After that I used three calibration stars, and then did a polar align on rigel.  Made the easy adjustments on the mount and had it pretty close now.  I could get 2 min subs with minimal star trailing.  Trailing was apparent but nowhere as bad as using the 6se with its Alt-Az mount with so much play the stars would be 4 times their normal size.

It was sooooo cold out though that I had to retreat early due to frost building up the end of the scope.   It was about 6 degrees out last nigt but it was awesome experience with the new mount with the 6SE OTA attached.  it took the weight of the scope no problem and when I attached the T3i, nothing changed.  Even in the cold it performed very well.  Can't wait to get the auto guider system in to see what we can come up with from there.  Ill post a before image and after image of m42 this afternoon as a visual between the two. 

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I Have this combo Paul, but have yet to get a clear sky to test it. I'm hoping for a chance this weekend.

I'm hoping its going to work fabulously. I have a limited view from my garden and do struggle to find good stars sometimes so hoping the SS will solve this problem. Will update if I get a chance.

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The place I use my AVX and StarSense is just South of the house, with more buildings to the East.  The first two align positions to the SW are fine but the third and fourth positions to the NE and E are obstructed.  On a good night the starsense fails to see any stars and keeps moving and retrying until it finds some clear sky and completes the alignment.  Sometimes the SS detects "stars" in the obstructed area and sometimes gets a solve.  This means that the alignment fails.  The solution is to do a manual alignment where you move the mount so it's pointing at four clear areas.  There's been considerable debate about how to solve this and I think there will be an upgrade that will cope with obstructions.

Chris

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Hi all, though I would give the share my first experience of the advanced vx mount. 

Welcome to the VX stable :-)

It's the best mount I've used - the only thing my NEQ6 has on it is capacity - it loses out on portability and spaghetti long/lat bolts (I hope it didn't hear me.....)

Same capacity as an HEQ5 

CG5 and EQ5-Pro Synscan are distant memories

I'm using mine primarily for observing with a C8 SCT XL but intend to see how it does guiding my Altair 115 triplet at Kelling - it was solid as a rock in the wind the other night so looks good

If it ever stops raining

David

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Good to read these very positive remarks about the VX mount. Like you RudeViewer, I need to move on from the alt-az mount I have for my Nexstar 6SE. I want to try my hand at AP and find this mount seriously limits my exposure time before star trailing becomes an issue. I've had my eye on the VX for a while now and have been watching the treads on here about it. Should I or shouldn't I? I've finally come to the conclusion "I SHOULD".

From what I've read, it's very capable and bang up to date. It also seems to be very portable, which I'm sure we all agree is a benefit when trying to set up.

I'm especially drawn to it by the fact that it uses an All Star Polar Alignment rather than a polar scope (I hope I understand the the ASPA process correctly) which is useful for me in that in my garden (where most of my observing and AP is done). I don't have a clear view of Polaris, making accurate polar alignment a bit of a non starter with a polar scope on a traditional EQ mount.

With this in mind, can anyone tell me how accurate the ASPA is for AP of DSOs?

I'm also planning on getting a SW 80ED DS-Pro to use on the VX for wide field AP - anyone any experience of these two things in combination for DS AP?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated before I take the plunge and max out my credit card...

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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From what I can see ASPA gets you to 5 to 10 arc minutes of the pole.  It depends on the accuracy of your alignment because it depends on that to determine the polar align error.

I find that good enough for guided imaging.

I use an 80 Oynx EDF OTA - 500 mm focal length and this seems to be perfect.  The ED 80 is similar isn't it? I have a very heavy side by side mount with a ST80 as a guide scope.

If I was starting from scratch I'd consider one of these finder-guider set ups.

Chris

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Thanks - I'm getting more and more to think about... I feel a headache coming on ;-)

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Dood - headache? - have a beer and dream about your new mount! LOL!

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Had a chance for a quick test on saturday, but failed to complete the initial alignment due to clouds rolling in before i could finish. (Murphy's law strikes again.)

Anyway, Sunday was amazingly clear despite a bad weather forecast. So I was outside by 6pm in twighlight. The starsense performed the first alignment flawlessly. I then did the calibration to centre the star in the scope and performed the alignment the 2nd time, as instructed in the manual. Another flawless alignment and found that evry object I chose to view fell onto the sensor. The objects were not exactly on the centre of the sensor, but that would be due to using an EP to centre the calibration star.

Had I used the camera to centre the star in the middle of the frame, I'm sure every object would have been in the middle also. First test was very positive. The next test will tell me if the Starsense will hold the calibration from one session to the next.

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Can anyone tell me - rather than using the all star polar alignment routine on the vx, can you fit a polar scope and polar align it the "old fashioned" way, if you want really accurate PA for long exposure astro imaging?

Adrian

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That's good to know. Still trying to decide between the vx and the HEQ5 pro for my mount upgrade for AP use. Many people on SGL seem to favour HEQ5 as it's got a proven record for AP but I'm leaning towards the VX for various reasons. They seem to say that the all star alignment system may not be accurate enough for unguided DSO imaging, which is why I thought if ask about the polar scope facility.

What's your views/experience of using the vx for DSO unguided AP?

Adrian

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The drift due to polar align error can be calculated.  I haven't done any serious imaging with the AVX unguided but with my CG5-GT and the same process - Align - ASPA - Image was managing 30 secs unguided with an 80mm F/6.25 refractor and a DSLR.  It might have gone longer, I didn't try.  I'd rather have lots of shorter exposures, the majority of which are usable, than take longer exposures, the majority which have to be discarded.  How this relates to other people's experience depends on their equipment, especially the image scale they are working at. 

Chris

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Yea it was with a 6.3 reducer.  F10 was no fun it was just too close.  Although around the edges of the picture there is lens flaring for some odd reason that comes out more with the focal reducer.  I am going to try a reducer flattener see what happens.

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