Help me pick a new mount - Forums

Topic starter

May 22, 2024 · Edited: May 22, 2024

I'm just looking for another mount

I'm selling my Celestron AVX, 'cause it's a piece of junk; guides roughly between "1 and 2" and no better

I tried many different things: moving one CW closer to the head, changing guide aggressiveness, changing calibration step size, changing guide exposure length, doing better PA; I simply give up now.

Maybe it could work with a Redcat or something, but I'm not going to lower my focal length

I need something that would give me, at the very minimum, 0.50" or better total accuracy; much much better if I can be able to get down to 0.40" or 0.30".

I have asked multiple times, both here and CN, what mount to buy; 90 percent of them say to get an EQ6-R.

There is also the belt/gear upgrade I can do to the EQ6-R (that was talked about on Astrobin some time ago)

One guy told me to get a Losmandy; I heard one guy getting 0.2" accuracy with his G11G, but they're kinda too expensive

BUT, if Losmandys are the best of the best, for the price, I'm willing to pay that much for one of them; I want something that wont cause me problems, and will last many years with good performance; good enough performance to do 10 minute exposures with a 9.25 or 11 inch SCT; if the mount could do that, then I know for sure it wont have a problem doing 10 minute exposures with my 8" newt.

And besides, I might transition to SCTs in the future

My OTA, with accessories, weighs 24lbs. My image scale is 0.82"/pixel.

EDIT: Also considering harmonic mounts; if anyone has tried the new Skywatcher harmonic mounts, plz tell me your experience.

MaksPower

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

You'll also need to learn to tune the guiding settings to get the best out of whatever mount you choose.

I'm imaging with a premium 10" f/12 mak (3,000mm focal length, no reducer), and the camera is an ASI2600MC DUO = 0.25 arcsec/pixel. I'm guiding at the native focal length of the scope, controlled by an ASIAir.

Mount #1. Originally I used it on an AZEQ6 I had for visual only, nowhere near good enough for imaging.

Mount #2 - a G11 with Gemini 2. I had quite a few issues with autoguiding that, even after solving those it never produced results that I was happy with, Sold it.

Mount #3 - a Skywatcher CQ350. This guided for a little while (~5 mins) then would stop guiding and the star drifted out of the guide camera. It had me tearing my hair out with frustration, and to this day I have no idea what was wrong with it.
When I showed the ASIAir log to the vendor they immediately swapped it under warranty…

Mount #4 - a second Skywatcher CQ350. This one works, guides all night without issues.

With this second CQ350 guiding is seeing-limited.
On a night with poor seeing guiding will be poor - 1 arcsec is not unusual.
On a typical night with reasonable seeing, guiding under 0.5 arcsec RMS, probably 5 nights out of 10.
The best I have seen was a night when the seeing settled and was superbly steady after 10pm, in this the rig guided consistently at 0.2 arcsec for about 3 hours, so it can perform to the limit of the seeing, if the conditions are excellent.

The CQ350 is a vastly better mount than the G11 in several respects. Mechanically much stiffer, larger worm wheels, pass-through cabling for USB and heaters (if you like that stuff). While it does not have friction clutches, the CQ350 has magnetic clamping of the worms against the worm wheel and the result is backlash is non-existent - and the mount is really quick to respond in both axes, so DEC guiding accuracy is excellent.

Prior to receiving the 2600DUO I was using a guidescope piggyback on top, this was an ASI120MM Mini with a 70mm APO, focal length 475mm, and this was also capable of guiding at 0.5 arcsec.

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Alien_Enthusiast

May 23, 2024

You only have 2 options;

1. Star Adventurer 2i

2. CGEM DX

May 23, 2024

Your best bet is a harmonic mount like an AM5 or an equivalent from iOptron; Very good guiding, high payloads.

Perfect for your big cats and casses.

Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

MaksPower:
You'll also need to learn to tune the guiding settings to get the best out of whatever mount you choose.

I'm imaging with a premium 10" f/12 mak (3,000mm focal length, no reducer), and the camera is an ASI2600MC DUO = 0.25 arcsec/pixel I'm guiding with the full native focal length of the scope. and its all controlled by an ASIAir.

Mount #1. Originally I used it on an AZEQ6 I had for visual only, nowhere near good enough for imaging.

Mount #2 - a G11 with Gemini 2. I had quite a few issues with autoguiding that, even after solving those it never produced results that I was happy with, Sold it.

Mount #3 - a Skywatcher CQ350. This guided for a little while (~5 mins) then would stop guiding and the star drifted out of the guide camera. It had me tearing my hair out with frustration, and to this day I have no idea what was wrong with it.
When I showed the ASIAir log to the vendor they immediately swapped it under warranty...

Mount #4 - a second Skywatcher CQ350. This one works, guides all night without issues.

With this second CQ350 guiding is seeing-limited.
On a night with poor seeing guiding will be poor - 1 arcsec is not unusual.
On a typical night with reasonable seeing, guiding under 0.5 arcsec RMS, probably 5 nights out of 10.
The best I have seen was a night when the seeing settled and was superbly steady after 10pm, in this the rig guided consistently at 0.2 arcsec for about 3 hours, so it can perform to the limit of the seeing, if the conditions are excellent.

The CQ350 is a vastly better mount than the G11 in several respects. Mechanically much stiffer, larger worm wheels, pass-through cabling for USB and heaters (if you like that stuff). While it does not have friction clutches, the CQ350 has magnetic clamping of the worms against the worm wheel and the result is backlash is non-existent - and the mount is really quick to respond in both axes, so DEC guiding accuracy is excellent.

Prior to receiving the 2600DUO I was using a guidescope piggyback on top, this was an ASI120MM Mini with a 70mm APO, focal length 475mm, and this was also capable of guiding at 0.5 arcsec.

thank you, but there's bad reviews of the CQ350

it seems like it doesn't always give good results, or maybe some CQ350s don't work as good as others; I don't like that

I appreciate what you said about the mounts though; I'll stay away from Losmandy

and thx for all the other info

Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024

Alien_Enthusiast:
You only have 2 options;

1. Star Adventurer 2i

2. CGEM DX

I want your third option, the Software Bisque Paramount one

Alien_Enthusiast

May 23, 2024

Alien_Enthusiast:
You only have 2 options;

1. Star Adventurer 2i

2. CGEM DX

I want your third option, the Software Bisque Paramount one

Just borrow a Planewave CDK24 from AAS and chill

Tell them you need funding like NASA

Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024

Your best bet is a harmonic mount like an AM5 or an equivalent from iOptron; Very good guiding, high payloads.

Perfect for your big cats and casses.

I think the AM5 might strain too much with the weight

does the rule apply to harmonic mounts too, the one that says, in order to get the best performance out of your mount, you need to be less than or at half of the maximum payload capacity of the mount?

Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

I like the iOptron mounts, like the CEM60; they seem to have very good reviews, and also I'm seeing a lot of images with very long exposures and heavy/long focal length OTAs (with the encoder version)

not sure if I need encoders?

MaksPower

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

If you want to guide significantly better than 1 arcsec the focal length of the guidescope matters. For a while I've had doubts about the guiding accuracy of the little guide scopes (eg ZWO) eg the small refractors on harmonic mounts that are so popular. While they're claiming under an arcsec I doubt it.

Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

oh, I've been using an OAG for a while now

sorry I forgot to say that

MaksPower

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

Ah. Sorry. I meant this in the context of the reviews of mounts. If they complain about guiding but were using little piggyback guide scopes I'd take the comments with a pinch of salt.

Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024

after reading through this, I don't want encoders anymore

maybe not even IOptron mounts, idk, not sure

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/721502-cem60ec-problems/

Alien_Enthusiast

May 23, 2024

after reading through this, I don't want encoders anymore

maybe not even IOptron mounts, idk, not sure

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/721502-cem60ec-problems/

Should I be concerned if I'm using Star Adventurer

Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024

Alien_Enthusiast:
after reading through this, I don't want encoders anymore

maybe not even IOptron mounts, idk, not sure

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/721502-cem60ec-problems/

Should I be concerned if I'm using Star Adventurer

but that's Skywatcher, not IOptron ;)

Alien_Enthusiast

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

Alien_Enthusiast:
after reading through this, I don't want encoders anymore

maybe not even IOptron mounts, idk, not sure

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/721502-cem60ec-problems/

Should I be concerned if I'm using Star Adventurer

but that's Skywatcher, not IOptron ;)

SW support prolly has me on their blacklist for sending 10 emails about tracking the ISS with Star Adventurer

Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

I'm thinking hard about the AM5

forgot that I could also add a CW and shaft for increased payload capacity (but not sure if I need those, since my OTA is within the maximum payload capacity without CW)

May 23, 2024

Your best bet is a harmonic mount like an AM5 or an equivalent from iOptron; Very good guiding, high payloads.

Perfect for your big cats and casses.

I think the AM5 might strain too much with the weight

does the rule apply to harmonic mounts too, the one that says, in order to get the best performance out of your mount, you need to be less than or at half of the maximum payload capacity of the mount?

Thats an old rule/myth that only really applied to mounts that have cog drives, like CGEM, AVX, etc. Those were the points where guiding was reduced to the point where the mount could not be used for astrophotography with systems in that weight class, and in some cases, close to the max torque for the motors.

Belt and harmonic do not have this issue since there is no backlash- a major cause of weight capacity issues.

For example, EQ6R's weight cap is stated at 44lbs, that is the astrophotography max, even stated by SW themselves. The true capacity is 65lbs- the motors start straining at that point. I've looked through a 14" newtonian at a star party on an EQ6R; it worked just fine for visual.

I've seen people put C11 and RC10s on AM5s and EQ6Rs with zero, to almost unnoticeable reductions in guiding performance.

If you're worried about old myths too much, get a CGX/CGX-L series, CQ350, or HAE69/69EC and call it a day.

Also, the iOptron encoder issue you're being dissuaded by was a problem that doesnt exist anymore, it was soley an iOptron issue with older mounts having faulty encoder units that would give incorrect readouts. New mounts don't really have those issues, and the encoder in the end will give you vastly superior performance, comperable to some of the ultra-premium mounts.

Hope that helps.

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Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024

THANKS!

Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

so, just to be sure, if I chose a CEM26EC, that would be able to handle my OTA just fine?

and would such a mount (with encoders) be better than the AM5?

Stjepan Prugovečki

May 23, 2024

Consider also iOptron CEM70. It is lighter than EQ6, with higher payload . I have one, it is permanently mounted outside , just wrapped/covered for 3 years now and it just works. I rarely see guiding RMS > 0.5" with 16kg rig on it.
My other two iOptron mounts also work without any issue. I especially like the small GEM 28EC, that is superb , with around 9kg rig with 110 cm long APM/LZOS refractor without any guiding.

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Dave Rust

May 23, 2024

I’ve got an Edge 925 on a CEM40 and get terrific results. On a calm night, most subs guide .35 to .6, which is about the same as my seeing conditions.

but I wanted a second rig that is lighter, for traveling.

So, I just put a wide field refractor on a HAE29EC. Wow. I can shoot 3 minute subs without guiding to get perfectly round stars. I do guide, though, in order to apply dithering. Guiding is exactly the same range as the CEM40…except a bit smoother, with fewer burps and blips due to the encoder. Highly recommend.

You can look at my images and see both at work.

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Oscar

Topic starter

May 23, 2024 · Edited: May 23, 2024

Dave Rust:
I’ve got an Edge 925 on a CEM40 and get terrific results. On a calm night, most subs guide .35 to .6, which is about the same as my seeing conditions.

but I wanted a second rig that is lighter, for traveling.

So, I just put a wide field refractor on a HAE29EC. Wow. I can shoot 3 minute subs without guiding to get perfectly round stars. I do guide, though, in order to apply dithering. Guiding is exactly the same range as the CEM40…except a bit smoother, with fewer burps and blips due to the encoder. Highly recommend.

You can look at my images and see both at work.

wow, your CEM40 images are really good

So far, I think I'm stuck between 3 options:

1. CEM26EC
2. CEM40EC
3. CEM60EC

I'm thinking maybe the CEM40EC

there's no rush, so I'll wait to see what others recommend

Fabio Acquarone

May 23, 2024

Hi,

this was my evolution :

Losmandy G8 .
Losmandy G11 + Gemini 1

and now

iOptron CEM 70G <– the best in this list….great payload, great guiding, great versatility

Fabio

Nick Grundy

May 23, 2024

I might've missed it, but did you mentioned your deployment method? Are you moving the rig out nightly? for 2-3 nights? or more permanently?

If it is nightly, I really like my HEM44EC for that payload. I wouldn't have any real expectations of the EC from ioptron though. They seem to improve peak RMS minimally.

If you aren't running it out every night, I'd go with the CEM70. I love the one I've got and it handles the weight well and guiding performance is good at that image scale (I do a lot of .78/sec with my TOA-130)

I've had an EQ6 in the past and it's awfully heavy for the payload. The AM5's are popular, but I don't use an ASIair, so there's less of a draw for me. Ioptron's have been good to me. I've heard negative commentary on their support, but I've never had an issue with them responding and being helpful.

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