Thursday, August 11, 2011

GotoNova and my SuperPolaris

Like many folks in the hobby, I have several scopes.

Old scopes are sold to finance newer better scopes.

I inherited (more like liberated) my dad's old 8inch Celestron SCT which was mounted on a Vixen built german equatorial mount called a Super Polaris.

This is my main imaging rig, unfortunately it only has an AC Clock drive.  Which means that it will track, but will not correct for error.  It requires 110v AC to operate which means batteries AND inverters.



Plus, when doing photography, its difficult to know if I am on the object or not.  Adding goto capabilities would go a long way towards reducing the amount of time I spend looking for objects.

The error correction would allow me to take longer exposures that I would not be able to do with just the AC clock drive.

I explored several options to get these features on my imaging setup.

I considered a new mount altogether, the Celestron CGEM.  I don't however have the 1500 bucks to buy it.

In the end I settled on the gotonova kit from Ioptron.

It is compatible with my mount, seems to operate well and has decent reviews on cloudy nights.

I ordered it last week and it will be delivered today!
With any luck I will have it up and running this weekend, although I may take this opportunity to tune up my scope and relube the internals.

Stay tuned for pictures and a report!

-SS




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