Looking for a mount suggestion

[Yubo]

Hi all!

I'm looking for a mount as I recently purchase a 80mm refractor. Want to do some astrophotographing when traveling outside big city. Therefore I'm trying to find a mount that can handle the load (refractor + camera is round 4kg) and has some fancy "high tech" stuff like controllable via APP and auto guiding etc..

I did some googling and only found Explore Scientific iEXOS 100 which seems to be the most suitable one but can't find any stocks in the UK. So I want to know if there are other choices around. What's your suggestion? Update: budget is around £600-£800.

Clear Sky!

Yubo

Edited May 12, 2021 by Yubo

[Astro Caller]

12 minutes ago, Yubo said:

Hi all!

I'm looking for a mount as I recently purchase a 80mm refractor. Want to do some astrophotographing when traveling outside big city. Therefore I'm trying to find a mount that can handle the load (refractor + camera is round 4kg) and has some fancy "high tech" stuff like controllable via APP and auto guiding etc..

I did some googling and only found Explore Scientific iEXOS 100 which seems to be the most suitable one but can't find any stocks in the UK. So I want to know if there are other choices around. What's your suggestion?

Clear Sky!

Yubo

HI Yubo 

What's your top budget?

Thanks 

[Dinglem]

@Yubo Hi and welcome to SGL,first thing everyone will need to know is what is your budget as that may narrow down the available mounts to suggest to you. You will idealy require a GEM (German Equitorial Mount) or similar. There are several makes available but knowing how much you would like to spend will help.

[vlaiv]

Hi and welcome to SGL.

I'm inclined to recommend something like this:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/ioptron-mounts/ioptron-cem26-center-balanced-equatorial-goto-mount.html

rather than that ES mount.

In combination with:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-accessories/zwo-asiair-pro-wireless-astrophotography-controller.html

will give you much better mobile imaging platform that you can control over your phone.

[Yubo]

1 hour ago, Astro Caller said:

HI Yubo 

What's your top budget?

Thanks 

Sorry, forgot to mention, budget is around £600-£800.

[Yubo]

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

Hi and welcome to SGL.

I'm inclined to recommend something like this:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/ioptron-mounts/ioptron-cem26-center-balanced-equatorial-goto-mount.html

rather than that ES mount.

In combination with:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-accessories/zwo-asiair-pro-wireless-astrophotography-controller.html

will give you much better mobile imaging platform that you can control over your phone.

Thank you very much for the recommendation!

I do have a question regarding to the setup. It seems like the Asiair pro is able to perform the GOTO feature so do I still need the Ipolar to perform polar alignment? Or they are completely different thing?

Regards,

Yubo

[Yubo]

1 hour ago, Dinglem said:

@Yubo Hi and welcome to SGL,first thing everyone will need to know is what is your budget as that may narrow down the available mounts to suggest to you. You will idealy require a GEM (German Equitorial Mount) or similar. There are several makes available but knowing how much you would like to spend will help.

Thanks, I have updated the budget. It's around £600 to 800.

I was using the Celestron GOTO mount came with the NexStar SLT 127. It's quite complicated to get it auto control and align as you need to purchase extra StartSense and WiFi module. Also I heard that although this mount can do tracing,  it's not very good at it. Therefore thinking to replace it to a EQ mount.

[Astro Caller]

For such a small payload and wanting to be flexible in terms of remote location, I would consider the EQM-35

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eqm-35-pro-synscan-goto-modular-mount.html

The mount is the most important purchase your make and when spending best part of £800, think about the future 

[Dinglem]

I started with one of these https://www.firstlightoptics.com/computerised-goto-astronomy-mounts/skywatcher-eq5-pro-synscan-goto.html   it was good and it will have enough capacity for your scope/camera. I've not tried the EQM35 but it has good reviews and can be broken down as a travel setup.

[Astro Caller]

15 minutes ago, Dinglem said:

I started with one of these https://www.firstlightoptics.com/computerised-goto-astronomy-mounts/skywatcher-eq5-pro-synscan-goto.html   it was good and it will have enough capacity for your scope/camera. I've not tried the EQM35 but it has good reviews and can be broken down as a travel setup.

Its a great mount if you looking at keeping your current payload for a few years to come. anything bigger you slower climbing into the £1200 - £1600 budget. i.e. EQ6R-Pro , CEM70 etc 

[vlaiv]

1 hour ago, Yubo said:

Thank you very much for the recommendation!

I do have a question regarding to the setup. It seems like the Asiair pro is able to perform the GOTO feature so do I still need the Ipolar to perform polar alignment? Or they are completely different thing?

Regards,

Yubo

Given your budget - you probably won't be getting what I recommended (as it is too expensive), but here is answer to your question.

iPolar is electronic polar scope. It has USB connection and needs to be connected to laptop in order to run windows app to do polar alignment.

As far as I know, ASIAIR also has polar alignment feature - but uses main camera on the scope to do that rather than separate electronic polar scope.

You don't need both. In fact - I would argue that simplest method is to polar align with regular polar scope and simple phone app that will give you Polaris position. Electronic assisted polar alignment is useful if you can't see Polaris or you are on southern hemisphere.

This is something completely different from GOTO feature. GOTO is system that instructs telescope to point to wanted object in the sky. It is part of observation while polar alignment is part of setup of EQ mount.

Most mounts that you are likely to get have goto functionality irrespective of ASIAIR - they have it in hand controller. ASIAIR just connects to the mount and uses mount goto feature so you can direct the mount with your tablet / phone rather than using hand controller.

ASIAIR is also useful for controlling exposures - looking at focus and frame shots and guiding the mount - it replaces regular laptop in the field and is handy for mobile use - less things to carry around.

[iapa]

16 hours ago, Yubo said:

Hi all!

I'm looking for a mount as I recently purchase a 80mm refractor. Want to do some astrophotographing when traveling outside big city. Therefore I'm trying to find a mount that can handle the load (refractor + camera is round 4kg) and has some fancy "high tech" stuff like controllable via APP and auto guiding etc..

I did some googling and only found Explore Scientific iEXOS 100 which seems to be the most suitable one but can't find any stocks in the UK. So I want to know if there are other choices around. What's your suggestion? Update: budget is around £600-£800.

Clear Sky!

Yubo

2nd hand kit can be good, I’d recommend keeping an eye on the Sell/Swap forum on this site.

• AVX mount if you can find one. Other will maybe recommend a different mount, Skywatcher EQ are often mentioned because of the 3rd party EQMod software
• ZWO ASIAir Pro
• You can probably get away with not using auto guiding for the time being.
• The ASIAir can help with polar alignment, focus, calibration frames.
• A tablet with the ASIAir app and Stellarium installed. You can use Stellarium to select your target and point the OTA.

 

[KP82]

On 12/05/2021 at 19:19, Yubo said:

Hi all!

I'm looking for a mount as I recently purchase a 80mm refractor. Want to do some astrophotographing when traveling outside big city. Therefore I'm trying to find a mount that can handle the load (refractor + camera is round 4kg) and has some fancy "high tech" stuff like controllable via APP and auto guiding etc..

I did some googling and only found Explore Scientific iEXOS 100 which seems to be the most suitable one but can't find any stocks in the UK. So I want to know if there are other choices around. What's your suggestion? Update: budget is around £600-£800.

Clear Sky!

Yubo

As I've got the iEXOS-100, I thought I'd share some of my experience with you:

• The mount is fairly light, but the build quality is good. It shares the same stepper motors, bearings and worms as the bigger EXOS2 according to info on PMC8 Groups.io
• Because of the similarity to its bigger brother, it has the potential to take on more payload than the advertised spec, but not in its default configuration. You will need the fine-az adjustment base, ST2 or ST3 heavy duty tripod and more counterweights in order to do so. These quickly add to its cost and the whole package will be about the same as SW EQM35
• Unlike many budget GEMs, it allows you to replace the default saddle with a better quality one (e.g. ADM)
• Lack of built-in polar scope (there is only a polar boresight), but if you're going to use any electronic PA, this isn't going to be an issue
• No PPEC currently
• The PMC8 controller is programmable and with the latest firmware you can change many internal parameters of the mount although the default values should work for most people
• No hand controller, so you have to use a pc/rpi/tablet to control it. It has full ASCOM and INDI support, so imaging with either Windows PC or Linux/RPi will be fine. For visual you can use either the ExploreStars app on your tablet or some self made custom solution which is what I do.

Edited May 14, 2021 by KP82