Advice for working with Original CGE mount (not pro) - Forums

Topic starter

Jan 11, 2018

Hello! I recently purchased a celestron CGE mount that's about 10 years old in good condition. I have worked with several smaller tracking mounts but I am having trouble with the CGE. There is no polar scope, so right off the bat I am guessing on general alignment. It asks for 2 alignment stars and several calibration stars… which is all very time consuming. Once I do all that it is still off - I am thinking because my rough polar alignment is off. 2 hours into my night and I am still trying to align this thing.

Has anyone worked with a CGE before that could offer advice? Are there 'easier' heavy duty mounts available nowadays? What can I do to cut down on setup time? Any other advice from a guy moving from the small DSLR tracking mounts to this heavy duty mount with small telescope?

Thanks in advance,

Donnie

Well Written Respectful Engaging

Chris Price

Jan 12, 2018 · Edited: Jan 12, 2018

After you do the two star alignment you have to keep going where it’ll ask if you want to do calibration stars say yes to this. You will do three more calibration stars it’ll prompt you of success alignment. This will fix your issue. Even with a rough polar alignment you should be spot on after you do all five stars for calibration. As you go further along on your calibration your stars should line up close to crosshairs on your finder scope if they are not try setting the factory default and re enter original info.
not to insult your intelligence because I have done this. Make sure you have daylight savings time or standard time set right because you could be an hour off either way.

Helpful

Donnie Barnett

Topic starter

Jan 12, 2018

Ok, thanks for the info. I'll give it another go.

Gilbert Ikezaki

Jan 13, 2018

Make sure you have the most current firmware. Here is a list of firmware versions.
You may need to buy a new hand controller.
Most likely you will need an update even with a new hand controller because there is also a computer in the mount not just in the hand controller. Here is one of many YouTube tutorials.
Read the user's manual. Here is Celestron's page for manuals.
After alignment calibration, use the All-Star Polar Alignment routine. Here is a description of what ASPA does.
CGE polar scopes, and Celestron polar scopes in general, are not very good, and they are expensive compared to what other manufacturers offer.

Helpful

Wes Schwarz

Jan 23, 2018

Hello! I recently purchased a celestron CGE mount that's about 10 years old in good condition. I have worked with several smaller tracking mounts but I am having trouble with the CGE. There is no polar scope, so right off the bat I am guessing on general alignment. It asks for 2 alignment stars and several calibration stars... which is all very time consuming. Once I do all that it is still off - I am thinking because my rough polar alignment is off. 2 hours into my night and I am still trying to align this thing.Has anyone worked with a CGE before that could offer advice? Are there 'easier' heavy duty mounts available nowadays? What can I do to cut down on setup time? Any other advice from a guy moving from the small DSLR tracking mounts to this heavy duty mount with small telescope?

Thanks in advance,

Donnie

I have one with the polar scope, I dont use the polarscope though. I use sharpcap with a 200mm lens and asi120mm instead to polar align. I stick a vixen plate below my soligor 200mm f3.5 which I use as a guidescope. It conveniently has a tripod collar and foot that bolts to the vixen plate. This along with the tpi az adjuster gets me 0 arcseconds of error pretty easily. Goto's are pretty straight forwards as long as you have all of your data loaded correctly in the HC, latitude, daylight savings, and hour/time/date are the kickers, if you dont have them right your gotos will always be wrong.

Helpful

Wes Schwarz

Apr 7, 2025

You need to use a usb isolator between the hc and laptop or you get error 16 & 17 issues.

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