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Mount levelling and goto accuracy

cuivenion

By cuivenion
in Discussions - Mounts

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Davey-T

Davey-T

Posted
Posted
On 03/03/2017 at 14:08, Zakalwe said:

A picture tells a thousand words. Even a finger painting by an idiot (me) in Photoshop :icon_biggrin:

Each telescope has had their respective mount top levelled. The ones at the pole and equator are at right-angles to each other. The one at 45 degree latitude is between these two extremes. The only common thing is that all telescopes are polar aligned, so their Right Ascension axes are all parallel and are pointing at the NCP.

Remind me again why levelling a tripod is necessary?:icon_biggrin:

 

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Levelling a tripod ONLY places it tangentially to the surface Earth, which itself is tilted at an angle. The only thing that is necessary is to have the RA axis pointing at the celestial pole. Everything else is irrelevant.

 

 

You'll be telling me next that the Earth's not flat :grin:

The pier top needs to be level otherwise things roll off onto the floor when you balance them on it.

Dave

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Cornelius Varley

Cornelius Varley

Posted
Posted
14 hours ago, Gazabone said:

Personally I always level the mount, not so much from a pointing accuracy perspective, more for safety. A friend of mine put up a heavy refractor on an EQ5 (not goto) at a public event. I ended up aiming it at something someone requested and because it was on a bit of a slope, the whole thing toppled on top of me. Fortunately neither the scope or me came to any harm but a salutary lesson nevertheless. 

It would be common sense to make the tripod level in the circumstance. No need to make it absolutely level though.

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Zakalwe

Zakalwe

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Cornelius Varley said:

It would be common sense to make the tripod level in the circumstance. No need to make it absolutely level though.

It'd probably be also sensible to use a mount that can carry that sort of load. The standard EQ5 is only rated for 9Kg so it probably was overloaded with a "heavy refractor".

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