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Celestron Advanced VX mount


Rudeviewer

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It's in my girlfriends camera bag :)

I was also playing with screws and bolts and things, the 70-200 has 2 fixings in the foot, whereas the 300 only 1. So if I slew badly, it can't suddenly slip with gravity.

Also I thought the zoom may give me a bit of breathing space, perhaps getting a few known stars in frame at wider angle and learning the capability of the mount slowly.

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Not gonna win any first time awards.. but i was happy to at least suss the mount out enough to get a pic on my first night.

Didnt process it at all, just 4x30 secs and 4 darks. (340mm, f4.8 iso 1600) I know i have a seriously long road ahead, but looks like its gonna be a fun journey... 

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here's the single 2:00 iso 800 I believe, on the vx mount. 

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Well done with that 2 min sub. Nice to see others having good tracking with this mount. Did you use all 4 calibration stars? 

Yep, almost like I haven't undone the clutch properly. Which has very small movement too.

Waiting for the North Star to pop into view any minute :)

Mine is also a little tight. Which doesn't really concern me too much except for trying to get balance. Just wondering if its really perfectly balanced or bound up just enough that it appears to be.

Not gonna win any first time awards.. but i was happy to at least suss the mount out enough to get a pic on my first night.

Didnt process it at all, just 4x30 secs and 4 darks. (340mm, f4.8 iso 1600) I know i have a seriously long road ahead, but looks like its gonna be a fun journey... 

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Good first attempt. Did you try any longer subs? How was your first impression of the mount?

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Cheers Matt.

First impressions... I extended the legs fully so everything was at an easy working height. I know for imaging is bad policy, but it seemed extremely rigid.

It all just did what I expected, which means my impressions were great!

As I asked in this thread earlier, the only thing I thought missing from the manual for a total newbie is something along the lines of, 'the mount will track after any alignment.'

After the initial 2 star alignment, I added 1 calib star, goto was spot on. The moon, Jupiter, Mars and Orion Nebula all spot on.

Then after an hour exploring the sky tour function, which showed me great views of next doors roof, a close up of an old oak tree and an object I can't remember the name of but was invisible on my st80, I decided to search my own objects for an hour or so,

I used skysafari on my ipad to help me scout around, then thought I'd try s few shots of m51 as a relatively easy object.

I didn't go longer than 30 secs, I need to buy a new cable release as the one I doesn't have a timer, just a click and hold. The longest exposure is 30 secs on the cam, so thought long enough for initial test.

I took a shot and realised the trails were pretty bad. Remembered I need to do a polar align. :)

Did a visual look though, then used Capella with the vx handset align. This is rough line up with 25mm eyepiece on st80. (So very rough, 'yeah, that will do ish' kind of thing)

Back to m51, 30 secs later, zoomed up on live view and noticed a bit of wobble in the shot.

This is due to the bad connections between scope and piggybacked dslr. So I tried again covering lens for about 3 secs at the start of the exposure to hide the shutter wobble. 4 of these later and got the above result. (I just need to mount dslr on both tube rings, not just 1 and sure this will fix that)

The mount seems quiet enough , I haven't had anything to compare it with though. I can't imagine my neighbours complaining from it.

Overall I'd say I was over the moon with the mount, next time out will try better alignments and longer exposures, I just had too much I wanted to cram in last night before any clouds came.

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yeah, definitely will. I thought easier to use a basic scope and piggyback till got things sorted with the mount and things, exposure times, guiding and light pollution etc. Also to give me more time choosing between ed80 and 150pds which will be the likely candidates for prime focus. Might get a synguider before the scope yet. lots of decisions ive not made yet. Glad I got this mount and the 'expensive' bit out the way. (saying all that, I might just have to get a t adapter, but thinking the adaptor for st80 wont fit an ed80 or 150...lol nothing is easy (or cheap) in this game :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been following this post a while as I'm loking for a good AP mount and scope.

After reading I think I'll be going formthe AVX mount with the 6" newt on top. S3ems a good price and with the change from 1k I can etill get a polar scope and perhaps stretch to a cheshire collimator too.

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Been following this post a while as I'm loking for a good AP mount and scope.

After reading I think I'll be going formthe AVX mount with the 6" newt on top. S3ems a good price and with the change from 1k I can etill get a polar scope and perhaps stretch to a cheshire collimator too.

Hi Jon

I've used this mount quite a few times and don't think you need a polar scope - you just do a rough align through the axis of the mount to make sure you can see Polaris and use the polar align routine - worked absolutely perfectly at Kelling in March - I imaged M51 (guided) for up to 15min - no trails or rotation in the subs.

I was really impressed with how the mount performed compared with the EQ5 Synscan Pro I had. It's lighter and gave the same results as my NEQ-6 too so a real bonus for travelling with it :-)

David

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The more I use it the more I like it. I have had issues with it though but I'm sure that most of it is operator error. Seems like every other time I have it out I have issues with the GOTO not being very accurate.

Last night was one of those times. Did the 2 star alignment and ASPA. Checked alignment and was off by a few seconds. Re did the ASPA and was able to get zeros across the board. Powered down and back up and re did the 2 star align +4 calib. Polar align still read 0 errors. Slewed over to Saturn check GOTO and it was nowhere to be found. Had to use the finderscope to put it on the screen. After that it tracked very well. Just don't know what or where I went wrong.

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The more I use it the more I like it. I have had issues with it though but I'm sure that most of it is operator error. Seems like every other time I have it out I have issues with the GOTO not being very accurate.

Last night was one of those times. Did the 2 star alignment and ASPA. Checked alignment and was off by a few seconds. Re did the ASPA and was able to get zeros across the board. Powered down and back up and re did the 2 star align +4 calib. Polar align still read 0 errors. Slewed over to Saturn check GOTO and it was nowhere to be found. Had to use the finderscope to put it on the screen. After that it tracked very well. Just don't know what or where I went wrong.

Hi Matt

I found using an illuminated reticle with cross-hairs (10mm) to do the alignment ensured it was much more accurate than just "eye-balling" the star into the centre of the eyepiece.

Just thought I'd mention that in case you weren't using one - it was a big help to me.

David

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Hi Matt

I found using an illuminated reticle with cross-hairs (10mm) to do the alignment ensured it was much more accurate than just "eye-balling" the star into the centre of the eyepiece.

Just thought I'd mention that in case you weren't using one - it was a big help to me.

David

I usually do it by using BYEOS and use the crosshairs to properly center. Last night as well as tonight I used my 12mm reticle EP. As you said you get the star dead center in the EP instead of eye balling it. 

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