EQ8 experience

[Thommy]

Dear all,

Any new experience with this Mount? How does it perform?

I know that several users have reported problems with the drive.  Do you have any knowledge whether the quality control has improved?

/Thommy

[Thommy]

No comments or hints as to whether the quality has improved?

[ollypenrice]

This is an excellent video showing the inside of an EQ8. It's not exactly what you are asking for but I think you would want to see it before making any decisions.

Olly

[libraryman]

The question; has it improved is difficult to answer, this mount has its followers and its critics in equal measure.

Its a known fact that you get what you pay for in this world.  however with the eq8 you get a very good payload at a very reasonable cost that I doubt will be contested....the issue appears to be one of assembly or build quality.....it can vary!

The components are good, the finish is acceptable to good, adjustment can be carried out to correct the variation in the backlash.

in my personal opinion having owned one for 2years it is as good as I can get for the money, the mount in the video really did benifit from the work carried out on it.

would I buy another, yes I would.......if .......I needed the capacity, I don't right now and it's a very heavy lump to move around.

its currently sitting in my Motorhome waiting for this poor summer to improve but I know that when clear skies arrive; the eq8 will perform excellently and not really blink in the southern English coastal breeze.

Ra

[tony210]

I would totally agree with Ray - great mount at the price point with very good load capacity and works well with EQMOD and computerisation but does suffer the limitations of build quality as Ray has shown with a dismantle -mine has done some good work - best wishes Tony

[ollypenrice]

When you look at the price of any bit of kit - mount, car, sunglasses, whatever - do you not also have to look into its likely lifespan? £2,500 for five years, £5000 for ten years, etc? How successfully can it be serviced? How many times can it be stripped and rebuilt? Is it built to be maintained?

 

 

[libraryman]

19 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

When you look at the price of any bit of kit - mount, car, sunglasses, whatever - do you not also have to look into its likely lifespan? £2,500 for five years, £5000 for ten years, etc? How successfully can it be serviced? How many times can it be stripped and rebuilt? Is it built to be maintained?

 

 

Yes I believe that you should, however being a tinkerer; ( a title applicable to a lot of imager) I can't help but mess, modify, generally try to improve....

would I do this with a £10.000.00 ; probably yes.....but it's easier to justify on a £3000.00

 

Ray

[Thommy]

Sorry, I didn´t notice the replies until now. thanks all. Well, I like to "mess and modify" as well (although I mess more than is good), but only to some old piece of junk where it is exciting to learn how much it can be pushed to perform, not a brand new mount to £3000! Besides I don´t have the time to do it. There is no doubt that I would prefer the Mesu mount from a technical point of view, but it´s definitely more pricey. Hmmm, there´s a lot of difficult choices in this business  

/Thommy

[swag72]

If I had the choice between a mount that I could afford and would potentially need tweaking and a mount that was more expensive and didn't - I'd go for the latter all the way. Also, being a Mesu user I can honestly say that I am as pleased as punch that I went for it. It was a toss up between a 10Micron and Paramount.... I know I made the right choice.

[Thommy]

Thanks Sara. I know there are many happy Mesu owners out there - nice to hear from you as well.

Another reason for choosing mesu would be my interest in imaging galaxies with a relatively small angular size. Then very accurate autoguiding is essential. In that respect mesu is a clear winner. My current mount is a CGEM and while it performs ok when imaging widefield, it is difficult to autoguide accurate enough for those small objects. My stars always look a little elongated because the guiding in DEC is much better than in RA.

/Thommy 

[swag72]

I would say that I average a guiding figure of about 35" per pixel..... Sometimes lower and others higher, depending on sky conditions. Of course my seeing will never match a figure like that..... So in my experience the Mesu is very accurate.

There seems to be a bit of a push for unguided these days.... But all you are doing, I think, is changing the guiding for another level of difficulty... These mounts don't work I guided on fairy dust..... Personally I'd rather guide.

[Neil27]

After my observatory is built and I have 'bedded' everything in - the Mesu will be my retirement mount in about 5 years time, no question.

For the price you can not knock the EQ8 - however its issues (although rare) are well known and documented.

My biggest reason for perhaps giving the EQ8 a miss would be the number of astronomers on here who have gone down that road and chosen something else a few years later. 

And I agree with Sara, once installed and running the mount is the one thing that you want to forget about.

Hope that helps, Thommy.

 

[Thommy]

All comments are helpful! Sara, I don´t understand your 35"/px - that´s quite a lot.

/Thommy

[swag72]

It's the RMS total figure...... Have I explained it incorrectly?

[Thommy]

Your total RMS seems to be 0.25". Perhaps there was a missing "." ? RMS is not pr. pixel.

Thommy

[swag72]

Guiding seems to be OK though.......

[Thommy]

Yes, your guiding is really good. My total RMS is typically around 1.35"