Hi

[ariefm71]

Hi, this is Arief. Just back from 5 years of hiatus from this wonderful hobby. I've recently acquired a 10" newt and a Vixen 70mm fluorite doublet. Planning to travel to Cairns for the christmas holiday and bring along the refractor. Any ideas what is the most portable alt-az mount I can use for this scope?

Clear skies! (it's been raining and cloudy in Sydney for the past few days)

Arief

[ianB]

Hi Arief,
Sorry i am unable to answer your question but thought i would say Hello and welcome :-) as no one else seems inclined to do so.

IB

[Regulus]

Hi mate, welcome back.
The Vixen porta seems to be popular as a grab and go
http://www.myastroshop.com.au/products/details.asp?id=MAS-033A3

[Renato1]

I make do with a solid small Manfrotto camera tripod to which I've attached a Celestron Delux Slow-Motion control. The trick being to set the tripod's panning arm away from one's body and getting used to using it that way.

Unfortunately, that control is no longer available and the equivalent Orion unit is a lot shakier (though it still works, one just has to be more careful with it). However, apart from the two knobs that give the up and down, left and right movement, the Orion unit also has a useless tilting head function which often comes loose with a refractor attached. So I glued it together to disable that function.

I can't think of anything smaller or lighter.
Regards,
Renato

[Sylvain]

Hi mate,

The mount is not so much the issue here, but rather the tripod.
If you can bring along an astro tripod, then options like the twilight or vixen are good grab n go mounts.
If you cannot bring an astro tripod, then you are limitting yourself to a photo one and the options will not be very good. Your best best in this instance is a high quality heavy duty photo head with slow mow controls but that would probably cost more than a twilight mount or similar.
I guess it depends if you are driving or flying!