info on this equipment

[wishicould (Wendo)]

I am completely new to all of this and am about to get a Williams FLT98 HEQ5 Pro, Williams zenith star 70 SW AZ4 Mount, has anyone had experience with it especially for photography? I wanna see stuff out there!

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

Hi Wendo and to IIS .
The 98 and HEQ5 will make a great AP set up and also higher power viewing of the moon and planets .
The. 70mm on the AZ4 will be perfect for those nights that you can't be bothered setting up the EQ mount.
All in all a good set up.
Brian.

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Hi Wendo
The HEQ5 has a rated capacity of 13.5kg. For astroimaging, usually it is best to keep well under the capacity, even as low as 50%. But let us assume that it will run happily at about 10kgs.
The weight of that scope is 5.18kgs so you only have 5kgs to accommodate camera, guidescope, cables, etc. Can be done just make careful decisions. A fairly light DSLR, a small guidescope (say a 50mm or 60mm) would work OK. Generally speaking, these mounts start to run into weight issues once you go up into 4" refractor territory. On the plus side, if you do control the weight well, the mount is very capable.
I have not used WO gear so cannot comment on that part of it.
The AZ4 mount would be very limited for imaging, if looking for long exposure, much better off with an EQ mount.

Cheers and good luck!!

Malcolm

[DJT (David)]

Hi Wendo

I have used the HEQ5 and skywatcher ED100 with dslr and guide scope and it worked fine, 20 min guided subs, no problems. I still use mine for portable work but with a smaller scope though heavier CCD. . The tweak I made was to swap the vixen type puck for a losmandy type which made things a bit more solid. You can get these from the ADM site or geoptiks also do them.


Enjoy.