EQ6 and Planetarium sofware

[IanL]

Can anyone recommend a good planetarium software for using with an EQ6 mount? ie as a refrence and also using goto via software
As I have never used any am not too sure what’s good and what’s bad.

Cheers
Ian

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Ian

Some others may be able to tell you more.

It depends on what sort of drive is on the EQ6. From what I can find out it appears that they just have motors and basic controls and you need a special program to drive these.

Many people have tried all sorts of mods to these mounts and most seem to like to retro fit the Meade LXD55 motors and 497 Autostar controller. When this is done any of the planetarium programs that can use the Meade drivers will work nicely.

Do a Google search. There are many reports on these mounts mostly very favourable.

Barry

[skwinty]

Hi Ian
I have an EQ6pro and I have used Starry night pro and Carte de ciel to drive the eq6.
I settled for Carte de ciel as my Starry night laptop does not have a RS232 serial port and using a converter only gave me problems.
So i use an older laptop running win 98 and Carte de ciel with no problems.
You must install the Ascom drivers however and the eq6 will work with the Celestron 5i driver.
The nice thing is Carte de ciel is free.

Regards
Steve:)

[peter_4059]

Astroplanner is another good option. There is a free version but I'm not sure if this one included the telscope interface. The license fee is very reasonable for the full version in any case.

[Terry B]

If your mount is the pro version or has the synscan motors after version 3 than the simplest is the EQMOD running with ASCOM and almost any planetarium software. I use Skymap Pro that I bought many years ago. Mine is version 6 and I think they are up to version 12 now. The earlier version works perfectly well.
A free option is Carte de ciel. It allegedly works very well but I haven't tried it with the EQDIR and EQMOD as I have skymap Pro.

[allan gould]

I use Earth Centered Universe. Clean simple and large databases if needed. Works with EQMOD or other ascom drivers. Cheaper and better than other programs IMHO

[IanL]

Thanks Guys, I should have said its the EQ6 Pro.

Ian

[iceman]

What if you don't have the PRO version? Can it be done then?