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Mount Upgrade
I have been considering for sometime about upgrading my mount. I've got a G11 at the moment.
What's stopping me is that the next tier of mounts is quite a lot of cash. Now I can probably afford/save up to get one without causing a financial apocalypse in the household, but I'm having trouble justifying to myself just what the extra benefits of these mounts are compared to the G11.
If you've had a G11 and upgraded, what did you upgrade to and why?
I use my mount mixed mode: in the observatory and taken out to dark sites. Ideally, the upgrade mount would do this and perhaps better (easier to assemble/disassemble/transport).
Obviously I would expect the mount to be more accurate and need less guiding corrections than the G11 - it would be the main reason for the change.
I'd like to move to a more automated setup over time. Subjectively, I feel the G11 just scrapes in on being able to do this and I suspect that there might be features out there on other mounts that would help (e.g. cable management).
As I've moved to a Linux based setup (INDI), I'm considering mounts from: 10 Micron, AstroPhysics and Bisque Paramount. I'd also be interested in hearing from anyone with these mounts who have used a Linux setup.
For now, I'm unlikely to change my scopes (RC10 and 107mm refractor) so I doubt any of them would be an issue for the weight I handle right now (both scopes are mounted right now). I have delusions, er, dreams of one day getting a bigger RC for a dark site observatory, but the weight is becoming an issue for me to handle as I get older, so this may become a non-issue.
So thoughts? Anything else I should consider?
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