Posts Made By: Michael Pereira

I'm interested in getting into CCD photography. I want to mount my Televue TV-85 (weighs about 8-9 lbs) onto my Celestron Celestar 8 Deluxe SCT (fork-mounted wedgepod), alternating between the two scopes as the imager and autoguider.

I was wondering if anyone as any experience doing this using this combination of scopes and mount? Specifically, will the SCT drive handle the weight of the TV-85, plus the weight of a CCD camera (most likely, SBIG ST-4 and ST-237 or a ST-7)? Also, will the SCT OTA mounting collar support the weight of the TV-85?

Any advice is appreciated. I know that the best answer is to eventually buy a 'beefer' mount, but I want to hold off on doing that until I can actually house the scope in an observatory.

I already have a NGC Sky Vector computer and Lumicon 4000 encoders, and was wanting to install them on my TelePod Head. Televue's Sky Tour and encoders looks like essentially the same thing. Does anyone know how to install my encoders on to the head (step-by-step)?

Thanks,
Mike