Two OTAs on a SW SolarQuest mount?

[JeremyS]

Anybody done this successfully for visual ? I have Tak FS 60Q for white light and Lunt 50 for Halpha. Would like to alternate between both.

[Roy Challen]

I was out this afternoon looking at the sun, and I thought the exact same thing. I can't remember what the capacity of the SQ is, but if it's anything like the AZ-GTI, it should cope with 5 kg. I don't know what your two scopes weigh, but I would think that they'd be within or just slightly over 5kg once the mounting paraphernalia are in place. Likewise, my Solarscout is about 1.4kg with diagonal and EP, so plenty of capacity for a WL scope to join it.

Now, I just need to buy a nice little ED frac and Herschel wedge!

[Steve Clay]

Until I got the Ed72 I used an Ed80 with quark etc, All up mass was 6.1 kg.  The SQ was fine with it. It would probably struggle with longer FL scopes as I noticed it did struggle once in alt when the focuser slipped.

Steve

[JeremyS]

I think the Solarquest will hold the weight of both my OTAs, but how do I mount them? Standard side by side dual dovetails I guess won’t work on an altaz and still be able to view through the scopes easily?

[Stu]

2 hours ago, JeremyS said:

I think the Solarquest will hold the weight of both my OTAs, but how do I mount them? Standard side by side dual dovetails I guess won’t work on an altaz and still be able to view through the scopes easily?

I had thought of doing that with an AZGTI Jeremy. You can screw a counterweight shaft into the threaded hole on those and use in of those clamps that fit to the end of a CW shaft to mount the scope. It may need a bespoke thread on the end of the shaft as it is not a standard CW thread.

You can’t do that on the Solarquest though because the sensor is fitted in that position.

I don’t think a side by side bracket would work very easily though, although if you viewed from the side it might work.

[JeremyS]

3 minutes ago, Stu said:

I had thought of doing that with an AZGTI Jeremy. You can screw a counterweight shaft into the threaded hole on those and use in of those clamps that fit to the end of a CW shaft to mount the scope. It may need a bespoke thread on the end of the shaft as it is not a standard CW thread.

You can’t do that on the Solarquest though because the sensor is fitted in that position.

I don’t think a side by side bracket would work very easily though, although if you viewed from the side it might work.

Thanks Stu. Yes I’ve got a CW shaft on my AZGTI, but as you say this is not possible on the Solarquest.

I recall @johninderby used an L bracket atone time. I wonder if something like that might work. Probably not long enough for two OTAs side by side, though. Then there is the balance issue…

[Stu]

1 minute ago, JeremyS said:

Thanks Stu. Yes I’ve got a CW shaft on my AZGTI, but as you say this is not possible on the Solarquest.

I recall @johninderby used an L bracket atone time. I wonder if something like that might work. Probably not long enough for two OTAs side by side, though. Then there is the balance issue…

I did think about a side by side but suspect you may face issues with the tripod being unstable.

Perhaps using the AZGTi is the best option, it would still track but not as accurately.

[badhex]

On 09/06/2021 at 21:25, Stu said:

Perhaps using the AZGTi is the best option, it would still track but not as accurately.

This might be a bit late as I'm guessing you'd planned to use this setup for the eclipse, but FWIW I used my AZ-GTi with a one-star alignment and it was totally fine. Needed a bit of slewing in the AZ initially, but once manually centred it only needed two very minor adjustments over about 2+ hours.