How Equatorial Mounts follow the stars, for Beginners 

That’s great I’m glad it helped. Equatorials are not at all obvious at first use so it’s sort of ironic that many scopes aimed at new astronomers are supplied with them. Clear skies!

Thanks Alan. EQs do mess with my head sometimes!

Glad it was helpful!

I hope you like the 127 Marcin. I think it's a solid scope.

Art was never my strong point!

Midnightlazycat Thank you for the positive feedback, it is much appreciated. The 150pds is a good choice. I love Maks but unless you are interested in planets then a Newtonian is a more versatile choice to begin with. Astro is more relaxing with low powers and bright, wide fields of view and a Newt of 130 or 150 offers these. The StarQuest 130 Newt is a strong package but a good 150 (or even 200!!) will last you longer. Clear skies, Graham

It is a shame that Skywatcher don't offer the mount on its own. It's not perfect but as long as it's used for visual observing with an appropriate payload of scope then I really like it.

Thanks Jean, top tip on the compass setting! Clear skies to you.

Thank you.

Thank you that’s very kind. Clear skies to you.

Thanks. Yes, Skywatcher offer a battery powered RA drive which can be attached to the mount.

Matan Rosenfeld Thanks! It’s one of the topics that is not intuitive, to me at least, so I made a video in case someone else thought the same! Clear skies, Graham

Thanks. I don't think you can buy the same mount on its own. Skywatcher used to sell it as the AZ-EQ Avant but only with an optical tube i think. I've looked at their mount range and it includes Star Adventurer Pro and AZ-GTI but these aren't really the same.

You guys are lucky, down here its not so stright forward. Thanks to Celestron you have a feature all polar alighment in the hand controller so helps you with polar alighment.

Thanks Garnett, I'll have a look!

A compass gives you a decent rough alignment that can be sufficient for visual observing. A polar alignment scope fitted into the polar axis of a mount allows a more accurate alignment. The Earth’s rotation is around a N/S celestial pole (true north), a point that is about 1 degree from Polaris in the northern hemisphere. Rotation is not around a line through the magnetic poles, which are offset from true north.

Hello, it will move around until it is pointing very close to south but then it can’t keep going as the counterweight will hit the tripod. The scope is now looking towards the meridian. The scope & mount will need to be “flipped” to keep following an object that has crossed the meridian. GoTo Tracking mounts know where they are pointing and can be set up to automatically flip, otherwise for manual mounts you spin them around by hand.

In that case this particular mount will not accommodate the movement needed to point the polar axis effectively at the horizon. I'd be interested to hear about mounts which can work at these latitudes.

@@JenhamsAstro pls share if you come across a mount that will work here.

I'll put it on my "to do" list of videos.

I don’t know whether the EQ8 has a minimum payload as such, certainly you’d be running with no counterweight if you’ve only got a camera and lens on the other side. you might even have to add weight I suppose on the camera side in order to make the balance correctly but honestly I don’t have experience with that size of mount. it’s quite a nice problem to have though! it might be more effective to buy a simple camera tracking mount like sky watcher offer in the star adventurer range, then the set up is more portable?

I generally don't, but one option is to centralise on a known, bright star, zero the scales and then use an app to calculate the difference in RA and Dec between the star and the object. Turn the mount until the circles display the offset.

AntPDC It is a bit of a lump! Fortunately your can separate the counterweight and then carry the mount, weight and scope outside in three trips. Abs must be engaged for the mount, plus I often extract some paintwork as I navigate through doors. Not grab and go but solid when setup.

Once you’ve got the mount set up to your latitude each time you use it you can just carry it outside and then point it to North using a naked eye alignment or I also use the compass app on my phone. That gets you close enough for most visual work.

Hi Ronald, I'll try to cover the issue in another video.

@@JenhamsAstro Thank you, dont forget a tube with a dovetail, no rings and both please MAK and Newtonian

Yes. If you look at many Schmidt Cassegrain scopes for example (Celestron/Meade) then you see they have alt-az mounts but you can add an optional wedge to make them into equatorials. The only issue with adding a wedge to an alt-az scope is that balance can become an issue and you need a sufficiently heavy tripod.

@@JenhamsAstro I just discovered this myself and have been using my Alt-az mount on a tripod in EQ mode and just love having to only use a singe axis to keep the object in view. Who knew? Excellent video by the way.

@@JenhamsAstro Sorry, 2nd reply. I see the balance problem and that would put a lot of strain on the axis gears I get around that by polar aligning the scope, then turning the tripod around 180 degrees. The scope is now centered on the top of the mount. It is a little clunky at zenith but using the altitude axis you can track the planets at least looking east and west. It makes astrophotography easier anyway.

Hi, there is short-ish answer: After it has been polar aligned, an eq mount only needs to be moved in ONE axis to track an object. On simple mounts like the one in the video this can be achieved by manually turning a knob (usually these look like long flexible rods and are called "slow motions") OR by attaching a "Right Ascension motor", aka a motor drive, to turn the mount. Computerised mounts can be both eq or alt-azimuth types, but they normally contain TWO motors to allow move the mount to any location. Longer answer: Most of these computerised mounts aren't very smart in that they are not "seeing" an object and then moving their motors to follow it as such. Instead they rely on an initial alignment where the mount is pointed to 3 stars. The software then works out which way the scope must be pointing and drives the motors from there. If the alignment was accurate the object stays centred for hours and selecting a new object and slewing to it ("goto") will also work well. But if the alignment was a bit off the object can drift slowly from the field of view even with a computerised scope. If you ever get into astrophotography then you can solve this issue by using a dedicated camera attached to a small guiding telescope which does sense a star and move the motors to keep it centred in a smarter (closed loop) way. This is called guiding, and is only really needed for precise photography. For visual observing, tracking (an open loop process) is good enough if you make a decent initial alignment.

It’s a good question. If you set the scope axis to be “parallel” with the polar axis then using the scope to sight Polaris can get you close. But for more precision a polar scope (assuming it is itself lined up with the mount’s mechanical axis) can take account of the fact that the Polaris is offset from the North Celestial Pole. The reticle and an app helps you get the angle correct. The other variable introduced by using the scope can be if the tube ring mounting adds another offset of scope vs mount polar axis. In summary your way is ok as a rough method for visual but not for anything needing precise tracking like astrophotography.

Yes, that’s it.

The basic mount in the video has no tracking so you have to manually turn the Right Ascension slow motion control to keep the object centred. In practise this is quite easy. Skywatcher do offer an optional battery powered RA drive unit which can drive the mount at the sidereal rate. www.firstlightoptics.com/sky-watcher-starquest/sky-watcher-ra-motor-drive-for-starquest-and-az-eq-avant-mounts.html

Yes

@@JenhamsAstro Oh Ok thanks for clearing it up!👍

Thanks, I agree they aren't the easiest things to get your head around.