Two giant boxes with Celestron written arrived at my doorstep today! I love those days. But today especially as I'd just sold and packed away my trusty EQ6 ready for a newer mount with a bigger max payload capacity. Here are my immediate thoughts on unboxing.
(Disclaimer, I'm on "Team Celestron" so am an ambassador of sorts for them, and I work as a third party with Bintel. However neither of these companies pay me for comment and I pay for my own gear like anyone, though I do get discounts and heads up on new stuff from time to time.)
I won't get the weather or the time to fully test the mount until after xmas, so these are just some observations until I can do some real world testing for you.
- Great build quality, not wobbly and plasticky like some of their past mounts that put me off Celestron mounts initially. Everything is machined and tight, like what you'd expect from an Apple product in a way.
- Like all good reviewers, I threw the manual over my shoulder in disgust and just started mashing things together like lego ... and it worked mostly! The upper axis comes boxed "upside down" but it immediately corrected itself by initialising the "switch positions" when I turned it on.
- I was confused about the azimuth adjustments initially before realising you had to loosen 4 nuts on the base plate before the rotation of the screws would do anything. This was counterintuitive but makes sense as it can be locked down well once polar alignment fine adjustments are made.
- The little windows and removable motor shields are totally useless (for someone like me anyway) but they look great and it's nice to see the belts working away.
- The slew noise is loudish but pretty/unintrusive/smooth/dull .. no variation or squawking that EQ6s sometimes have. Just a clear mechanical whirr. Not too loud, just not quiet.
- The sidereal tracking noise is very quiet indeed. Imperceptible almost like Celestron mounts often are, unlike the EQ6 which has that techno beat buzz you get used to but isn't really that bad anyway.
- The mount remembers your site details / time & date internally which is great, but no amazing feat. All mounts should always have done this in the first place.
- Still no power supply provided with the mount. I don't get it. It's possibly the cheapest thing they could provide aside from the bubble wrap. Not just celestron but all astro vendors - is it too much to ask to include the cable that makes your purchase actually turn on?
- The cable they do provide is the old ciggy-lighter number. I know when the original James Bond drove cars it might have seemed cool, convenient even, to have a power source in your car that also lights your cancer-sticks but why on earth this become the de facto standard for astro gear is beyond me. I kind of like it when Apple kills off floppy drives, USB2 ports and other old standards but astro vendors seem unwilling to do this. I'm ranting beyond the scope of this review, but you know what I mean. These are space age devices, surely we can handle an upgrade to portable power ports by now or you know, include a power supply.
- Double handles, huge knobs all great, but the nuts on the base and for azimuth locking require a large allen key, which though provided, is easily lost and an odd design choice. Makes no difference for me in an observatory but I can see people in the backyard or star parties trying to tighten these flush nuts by hand, scrabbling in the darkness for the missing key or resorting to pliers to scratch them up in desperation. Small ribbed bolts may have been a better choice, but perhaps they were avoided for cable snag potential. I didn't even realise the allen key was there until I read the manual and found it hidden under the bottom handle.
- Black Mounts, Eggshell White OTA's .. it's a design faux pas that I can excuse but my wife thinks looks silly. She kinda liked the All-white observatory with White Edge HD and White EQ6
I suppose colour could have a minor impact on equipment temperature but regardless, it would be cool to see some consistency across the product lines so they match.
Apart from those minor quibbles I'm very excited to see this very solid, modern mount in action. I'm not looking forward to using the hand controller as I'm used to my EQMOD setup and the Planewave software is not available until Feb. I will miss my plate solving mostly. Also I tend to remote control from inside the house so the hand controller is just an annoying reason to go outside for target selection and what-not. Still, all this should be resolved in time. Feel free to ask questions if you have any.
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