[DJ N]

Hi all,

Still tossing around ideas of equatorial mounts. Looking at purchasing an 8 inch SCT and mounting it to a GEM, preferably with goto. Looking at this great website along with other literature, the consensus seems to indicate that the HEQ5 mount seems ‘a lot’ better package than the CG5 (as a friend of mine put it, when he saw both of them side by side, it was like comparing a BMW to a Hyundai!!). The chief purpose of the mount is for visual use, but with a pal of mine and his ‘expensive’ camera gear, we are starting to dabble in quite a bit of astrophotography using my Dob so I have come to the conclusion that I need to upgrade (on top of this we now have access to a private farm about an hour out of Adelaide where the skies are pretty good – at least much better than Adelaide itself).

So the question which comes to my mind, which would be better,

• HEQ5 Pro series mount (obviously wait for version 3 software)
• Standard HEQ5 mount and fit Argo Navis (this then would make it ‘drive to’ rather than goto?).

Option 2 would probably turn out about the same price as the HEQ5 Pro, but my thinking would be that this would be a less complex system in terms of reliability. Would I be correct in assuming that the drive system of the standard HEQ5 would be less complex than the Pro series???? I would have thought the Pro series would have additional circuits etc… so more things to go wrong with it???

As a final thought, is the CG5 that much inferior to a HEQ5??

Oh by the way, I did consider the EQ6, IT IS MAMMOTH (so I have definitely dropped this one from the equation).

Would be great to hear peoples thoughts!

Cheers,

Daniel