Thread: Mount Upgrade
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Old 09-02-2018, 06:18 PM
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Amaranthus (Barry)
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Amaranthus is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Judbury, Tasmania
Posts: 1,203
Chris, this might be a radical suggestion, but have you thought about going down rather than up. Say a Skywatcher AZ-EQ6. In AZ mode it's great for visual, in EQ it's a solid AP platform with a belt driven and controllable by the wonderful thing that is EQMOD. It would handle both the RC10 and mid-sized frac with ease.

What's the catch? Visually, none at all. Synscan is beaut for portable pointing and slewing, and this mount works well for SkySafari etc. with a wireless dongle. For AP, obviously there is the PA and worm smoothness to consider. So it comes down to your pixel scale and camera's read noise. If you're using one of the new CMOS imagers, such as the ASI1600, then the read noise is insanely low at medium-to-high gain. So you can get away with much shorter exposures for the same SNR. This is a bit of a game-changer, IMHO, because it means we are inching towards the inevitable obviation of expensive high-end mounts that require super-long-exposure guiding/tracking precision. Not there yet, sure, especially for narrow-bandpass filters, but inching there. It's still a personal judgement call, but there are many pros these days to offset the cons of a solid mid-range mount, when coupled with the right scope and camera.
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