Binoculars on EQ1 or EQ3 mount

[zumka]

Hi Guys,

Is it posible to use 25x100 binos with eq1 or eq3 mount ?

[tlgerdes]

If you are a contortionist, it might work.:shrug:

Think about how the mount head rotates.

[chris lewis]

No. Not unless you are a contortionist. EQ mounts do not work. Some have tried. Including myself. You really need a tall eg. 7ft. heavy duty Manfrotto / Bogen type tripod with crank so you can get 'under' the binos to view. Below is a good site to view with some sound advice.

http://www.cloudynights.com/documents/thoughts.pdf

[dugnsuz]

Here's a good (US) site for all things binocular - check out the tripods/mounts section for ideas.

http://www.bigbinoculars.com/

Cheers
Doug

[Dennis]

If you can “convert” the eq mount to an Alt-Az mount and balance the binos with sufficient counter weights, you might find some usefulness in the slow motion controls. The conversion would require the RA shaft to be set to 0 degrees altitude, as if you were observing on the equator.

Even if this were possible, the DEC shaft may then foul the tripod?

Cheers

Dennis

[dannat]

i agree an eq mount is unsuitable - i have a vixen polaris which can be set to 90dg & hence run in alt/az mode is unsuitable. a P-mount is what you need ..they are expensive in australia but so are manfrotto 055/fluid heads. you can make a fixed p-mount if you can get by with moving your chair instead of the mount up/down

[Dennis]

I think that the (older) Super Polaris could be set to 0 degrees which makes it feasible to use as an Alt-Az mount, whereas my Vixen GPDX can only be set to 90 degrees making it unsuitable.

Cheers

Dennis

[snowyskiesau]

I have one of the Bintel large binocular mounts.

It has an AZ3 mount as it's base. The actual AltAz part of the mount is removed.

It should be a fairly simple project to make up a parallelgram mount to suit the AZ3 (or EQ3)

I've just looked at the (Celestron) Super Polaris mount I have and you can set it to 0 degrees, not sure how practical it would be. The Vixen GP mount which is very similar doesn't appear to allow the same 0 degree setting but I didn't try real hard..