New formax lighttrack II

[mindburner]

Hi I decided to take the plunge into portable mounts. I looked at the astrotrac which looks really good but I also noticed formax mounts. The lighttrack II seems to have very low error and has decent specs regarding weight etc.  

I already had skywatcher wedge. Plus an old tripod which was quite good quality from a video camera. I got a cheap ball head from eBay and installed  my Trusty Canon 1100D and nifty fifty lens. I also have a 200 millimeter lens as well plus a Pentax camera with the 300 millimeter lens

I was a bit confused about the polar scope seem to be for the Southern Hemisphere. But apparently this should work ok with apps and so on.

I have aligned the celestron polar scope so that the 0 Mark is Uppermost in the field of view and try to get it like vertical compared to say a lamp post. 

Next I plan to use an app to show the NCP. It's all new to me as I was used to using EQ mod.

I also collimated the polar scope at the centre was off by quite a bit. 

The fornax  Mount is beautiful. Very nicely made and makes a rather pleasing sound from the stepper motors. 

I have yet to try it out but hopefully I will be in the possession of a dark Sky site pretty soon. I was up for the weekend and could not believe how fantastic the sky was compared to my suburban area. I could actually see wispy bits in the sky I think this was the Milky Way. Pretty cool for a townie like me.

As usual, I hope to get a bit of stargazing if the weather clears up and will report back on how good or not the device is.

 

 

 

 

 

[Febco57]

Hi mindburner. I am curious about how the Fornax Lightrack II performs in comparison to the AstroTrack? The AstroTrack has the advantage on load capacity with 33 lbs vs 12.5 lbs but the Fornax tracker has better tracking accuracy of 2 arc seconds per 8 minutes. What is your assessment of the Fornax Lightrack II ? Do you think it can handle 15 lbs? 15 min exposures with a 300 mm lens + 1.4 x TC?

Thank you for your thoughts.

Febco57