At the 3:25 mark when the mount is centering the sun, it appears the you captured the ISS transiting the sun. What are the odds of making a solar video and getting a transit? Well done!!!
I was wondering about that. It very well could have been something else. It looked kind of like the ISS but I think when I looked at the ISS solar transit times for my location it didn’t match up. I didn’t look to see when the Chinese space station or other things were transiting the sun. Didn’t appear to be an airplane at any rate.
Thank you for the video. I purchased this mount along with a Lunt 400mm for the upcoming Eclipse on 08 April 2024. I received my equipment 2 days ago. I've been thinking about getting into Solar Astrophotography (AP) and visual. Thye eclipse gave me a good reason to make his purchase. Now I just need to clouds and upcoming rain to part ways, so I can practice visual and AP.
The directions that come with this product are very sketchy at best. Just bought one of these units and very happy with it otherwise. Your review was perfect and to the point thank you!
You think there would be some software update on this model to make it more useful at night by tracking at least the moon . Also that was probably just a normal satellite passing at 3:25 , with well over 11, 000 of them orbiting the earth .
It is basically a software-limited version of their GTI mount but with the solar tracking camera. Yes, it would be nice if it still had all the other functionality.
Great video! It's been 8 months since you posted the video. His the mount still working well? How long does a fresh set of batteries last under normal use?
I still use it and it worked great during the eclipse. Not sure how long the batteries last, but it is quite a while. I’ve never had them die as if I’m concerned that they might be running low I just swap them out.
Nice review! I was considering buying this mount to photograph the upcoming eclipse but I don’t think I’ll be doing much solar photography after the eclipse. Are there any other mounts that can be used for solar as well as lunar and night time photography that have the ability to track that don’t require a polar alignment?
The skywatcher AZGTi mount is basically the same but doesn’t have the solar finder and can be used for deep sky and planets. It will track the sun too, but it will be more of a manual effort to get aligned with the sun.
DoesGreat review! Just received my Solar Quest mount. Was wondering however.. The little solar sensor/finder, does it have a thin plastic wrapper on the glass which needs to be removed? As it seems to scratch even with trying to clean it with a microfibre cloth...?
Hi, do you have any problem with this Mount? , I bough one a month ego ,was working pretty good ,but now when go to point the Sun ,is off ,I shut off re start and the same thing ,plus if I want to restart I need to disconnect the battery pack reconnect and restart ok, nice video ,thanks.
Any smallish scope (around or under 10 pounds or so) with a vixen rail should be fine. The tripod is pretty light so you can probably put a somewhat heavier scope on it if you upgraded the tripod.
It tracks pretty good. I haven’t tried it at high magnification, so not sure on that. It will keep the sun in the field of view for a long time with the tacking camera (it did the entire eclipse without issue, for example) but I’m not sure about how well it would keep a specific prominence in the center of the field of view.
Collapsed length is 27”, shortest height with legs spread is 25”, tallest height with legs extended is 44” without column. The extension column adds 8.5” so max height would be 52.5” roughly.
Should track through setting ok, but rising will be harder since it won’t be able to track it until it finds it which it won’t do until it is risen. It is easy to find the sun at sunrise, so you could probably align it manually. But not sure how long it will take to start tracking it correctly. I’m not sure what it would do with the sun if it was only part way up.
