Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
Guys if you can run the EQ8 under Tpoint it might compete. However, I don't see that happening yet at all. With Tpoint my mount can point at 12 arc seconds. If the EQ8 can point at 12 arc seconds at present it would present a coupe, but I don't see that happening.
The more high end mounts have integration ports which allow for automation. All I see on the EQ8 is a guide port and an hand controller port. I might be wrong here but I don't think it will be useful for automation at present. It really needs a USB port (USB2) for automation. In time it might have the necessary ports but for now I cannot see it happening.
The PE graphs I have seen so far look incredibly flat and this makes me wonder if the PE is being taken correctly (not saying anyone is stupid here but it can be taken incorrectly). The PME has a sine wave graph and even the AP mounts do. Nearly flat graphs indicate that the camera is not orientated correctly. Happy to be wrong but at this stage I am cautious about any claims being made.
Don't get me wrong I am happy to see more competition and maybe provide a different price point, but assertions of this mount being equal to an AP or a PMX is really over reaching. Ray come down to my place sometime and see a PME and then you will see what I am talking about.  |
exactly what I wanted to find out thanks. TheSkyX can run any of the Skywatcher mounts and my understanding is that TPOINT runs in that environment, so it should be possible to run TPOINT/EQ8. All the Skywatcher mounts can run USB with an adapter.
All of the EQ8 PE curves I have seen suggest about 6-8 arc sec pp and smooth, which seems reasonable for a system with 8 inch gears and direct drive to the worms. I used phd for getting pe data from my EQ6 and that automatically corrects for camera orientation - pecprep takes care of scale and Dec. don't know about other software, but it isn't too hard to get reliable PE data and I would assume that most published data is OK.
Prefer not to see a PME in action
who knows, I might want one. My philosophy is to wring the last ounce of performance out of the gear that I have and I haven't quite got there yet with my EQ6. But thanks very much for the kind invite.
Regards Ray