[The_bluester (Paul)]

OK, my recent child induced mount issues have set me thinking.

I am beginning to find the Celestron CPC mount limiting, I think it is a brilliant mount for visual observing and particularly for showing the night sky to very inexperienced people. The fact that it tracks reliably and the EP stays in pretty accessible places makes it hard to beat for that function.

The obvious drawbacks are that it is more or less useless for AP due to field rotation (I knew that when I bought it) and I am beginning to find the goto mount limiting. I have a few favourite objects and predictably enough they are often well separated in the sky. When I decide to change from one to another the "Set it slewing and go for a cuppa" routine can wear a bit thin. But the goto is still handy at my experience level to get it to point to objects I am not familair with.

My question on the EQ/HEQ is related to this. The CPC Alt/Az is useless until it is aligned (Not utterly, even with the dead controller we had a look at the moon and 47 TUC for the folks who were visiting and bumped the scope around manually Dob style, it is not an easy mount to do that with, but a low powers it was possible) The CPC mount sits there dead as a dodo until it is aligned then the drives spring into life.

With an EQ5/HEQ5 pro and SynScan, can the hand control be set up to run the RA motor at siderial rate as a simple clock drive if the controller has not had any star alignment? That would allow me to decide to change objects, release the clutches, slew the scope manually and lock it up again to centre with the hand controller and let the RA drive take over the work, making the assumption that I have done an OK polar alignment. If I want goto I can then do a star alignment as required. Obviously it also makes the mount useable as an AP setup with longer exposures, in the amateur end of the market I have trouble seeing a derotator as a great alternative.


I hope my wife does not read this! It sounds like I am looking to buy a new mount, then a new OTA to go on it even though I have got mine going again, that would get me in trouble!