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Motor mounts?

Dubbs75

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Dubbs75

Dubbs75

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I know this is a complete noob question but can any scope be attached to a motorised mount? We are just getting into astrophotography and realised a motor mount will be really useful for exposures over about 10 seconds. Thus i'll need to attach my Celestron powerseeker 127 eq to a mount. Is this possible or is it a case of only some scopes being compatible with there types of mounts?

Cheers in advance for the advice guys :)

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MartinB

MartinB

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Some setups come as a package e.g. the Meade and Celestron fork mounted scopes. Most mounts however come with a female dovetail and at the smaller end of the mount range the Vixen dovetail is the standard. Not sure what dovetail your scope uses but if it's a different fit to the Vixen it should be easy to swap.

Provided you can fit the scope to the mount all scopes that I can think of are suitable to be motorised

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brantuk

brantuk

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The key here is to ensure you have the correct attachments for scope to mount. You'll find all sorts of attachments including dovetail bars, tube rings, clamshells, bolt on fittings, and others. You'll need to check what your mount can accept and chose the best combination. It's not as bad as it sounds though and you'll soon get the hang of it.

If you're still baffled you can allways ask a question here - someone will have a similar setup and know what to suggest. :)

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E621Keith

E621Keith

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I had a quick glance scan at the powerseeker 127eq, it appears to be using an EQ1 mount.

PowerSeeker 127EQ Telescope (item #21049) / PowerSeeker Series Telescopes / Telescopes / Products / Celestron.com

If it has an EQ1 mount, you can fit a motor module to it to enable tracking in RA. Your dovetail should be Vixen/skywatcher type already, so you won't need to spend extra cash on a new dovetail.

Skywatcher - RA Economy Motor Drive for EQ1

The EQ1 is rather weak for astrophotography, so you should consider replacing the mount with something more beefy, like a EQ3-2 or EQ5.

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E621Keith

E621Keith

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Everything do appear to move at different speed on an Alt-Az system, but this is not true if you use an equatorial system.

The earth rotate from west to east, so from our point of view, all objects in the sky (sun, moon, stars ...) move from east to west. The sky's movement is centred around the earth's axis of rotation, which rotates once a day.

The equatorial mount's RA axis should be set up so it is parallel with Earth's axis of rotation (a process called polar alignment). Then you will only need to adjust position in the RA axis to track object across the sky. The purpose of the RA motor is to automatically apply the counter rotation needed to compensate for earth's rotation.

Although the linear velocity in the sky is different, (objects closer to pole is going to move slower than those on the equator), their angular velocity remains the same.

A motorised alt-az mount will need to correct for the variable linear velocity in both altitude and azimuth axis, while an equatorial mount only needs to correct for a constant angular velocity in RA.

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