Hi!
Last night I had a chance to attend a star watching party and took my C9.25. I was excited as I recently installed dual axis drives to my stck CG5 mount head, as well as just finished fitting a Pelican 1660 case for my OTA (I succeeded in getting everything but my mount head, tripod, and eyepiece collection inside the 1660. As such I got a lot in the case, and was very happy).
At the star watching there were 3 dobs (looked like two 8" and one 17"(?)) and my telescope. Due to the time of setting up for the star watching I could not see Polaris, as such I had to approximate where it was. As it turned out I was close but not perfect in my estimation.
When using the system with the new dual axis drives I noticed the RA on the dual axis drives slewed very quickly and I could keep up with the fast movement of the moon, etc.. Yet the DEC could not keep up. In the end I would always loose the celestial body I was looking at very quickly. In fact even with a 25X eyepiece the moon would only stay in the FOV for around 30 seconds and then I would have to reposition the telescope.
This was exasperating to say the least, especially since the 8" dobsonian would keep an image of Mars in its FOV for a long time, whereas my telescope could not (I could barely center it as it would leave too fast).
Any thoughts? Is the fact I could not get a really good polar alignment the problem I was experiencing? Is the dual axis drive system not working (I tend to think this may be the case since I could not get the slewing to work for the DEC nearly as fast as the RA)? Do I need a better mount than the CG5 (I had also included legs stabilizers), such as a Losmandy GM8?
Thanks you all in advance!
Sam
Last night I had a chance to attend a star watching party and took my C9.25. I was excited as I recently installed dual axis drives to my stck CG5 mount head, as well as just finished fitting a Pelican 1660 case for my OTA (I succeeded in getting everything but my mount head, tripod, and eyepiece collection inside the 1660. As such I got a lot in the case, and was very happy).
At the star watching there were 3 dobs (looked like two 8" and one 17"(?)) and my telescope. Due to the time of setting up for the star watching I could not see Polaris, as such I had to approximate where it was. As it turned out I was close but not perfect in my estimation.
When using the system with the new dual axis drives I noticed the RA on the dual axis drives slewed very quickly and I could keep up with the fast movement of the moon, etc.. Yet the DEC could not keep up. In the end I would always loose the celestial body I was looking at very quickly. In fact even with a 25X eyepiece the moon would only stay in the FOV for around 30 seconds and then I would have to reposition the telescope.
This was exasperating to say the least, especially since the 8" dobsonian would keep an image of Mars in its FOV for a long time, whereas my telescope could not (I could barely center it as it would leave too fast).
Any thoughts? Is the fact I could not get a really good polar alignment the problem I was experiencing? Is the dual axis drive system not working (I tend to think this may be the case since I could not get the slewing to work for the DEC nearly as fast as the RA)? Do I need a better mount than the CG5 (I had also included legs stabilizers), such as a Losmandy GM8?
Thanks you all in advance!
Sam
