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AZ Synscan goto, how good


nightfisher

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As above, i am still thinking about getting this mount to use my 102 Maksutov on it, is it a good mount, what flaws or problems does it suffer, i would be looking at used rather than new

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Mostly yes and a little no, I use the AZ Synscan Goto on my 14" Dob and it does a good job at tracking and locating objects, but it is not as smooth or accurate as my CGEM. The CGEM tracks smoothly and accurately find objects where the Synscan periodically bounces or clicks into place when tracking objects at high power, like planets at 300+ magnifications.

As the night goes on I find its pointing accuracy does diminish with time, but it's not a deal breaker for me, I just realign when it get too far off... doesn't take long.

 

 

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Jules,

I have this mount, albeit in a modified form, but I am very happy with mine, it gets a great deal of use with a ST102 and I find the goto and tracking to be very good the majority of the time.

I found that both of the stock tripods (aluminium and steel) were rather wobbly, though the steel tripod was more stable than the Alu one.

I had an adaptor fabricated to allow me to connect the GoTo head to an EQ5 tripod, which has improved the mount no end, though the lump of steel making up the adaptor has added a significant amount of weight to the setup.

There is a thread here: 

I've found that if you're careful to level the mount before you start, and are careful with centering the stars during alignment that the mount works very well.  I now use the 12mm Skywatcher eyepiece with illuminated reticule for alignment and find that the GoTo places targets within the field of view of an 8mm eyepiece (62x mag) of 5mm eyepiece (100x mag) on my ST102.

There is also a thread on here where a number of forum members use the AZ Goto or newer Star Discovery mounts to produce some stunning images.

There are several threads on SGL giving tips on how to maximise the accuracy of the mount, but can't find them at the moment.

I'm more than happy with mine and will keep it until it eventually fails.

Hope this helps,

Ade

 

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Hi Jules. I have an AZ Stardiscovery Goto which I believe is similar to the the synscan AZ but has the ability to unlock the clutches to move the scope around quickly manually if required. With care in the setting up and levelling of the mount well, and selecting the correct stars for the initial 2 star alignment that are approximately 90 degrees apart from each other this is a very good mount. I found it works best with a 20mm EP to find targets with. Mostly the required objects did appear OK somewhere in the FOV of the 20mm EP OK even if not in the centre of the EP. It has allowed me to see objects that I would find hard to see with star hopping (still not great at that). I used my 4SE Mak on the mount OK.

As I have now upgraded my Goto mount to the Nexstar 6/8SE Goto mount I will at some point soon be putting the AZ Stardiscovery Goto mount up for sale as I don't need two Goto mounts. 

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Could some one post up how to align the synscan goto az mount as I am picking one up tomorrow and not got a clue, I seem to remember the time and date has to be put in and in correct format

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10 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

If you have an android device use the synscamit application it's a great help on doing the settings.

can you explain a bit more , does the synscan link to android device?

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3 hours ago, nightfisher said:

Could some one post up how to align the synscan goto az mount as I am picking one up tomorrow and not got a clue, I seem to remember the time and date has to be put in and in correct format

Hi Jules. I'll go through the process tomorrow morning with you. Also, there is a guide as well, so pretty simple to do really. You just need to input the date in American format (month, day, year) then time, and also if you have daylight saving or not. 

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