TheSkySearchers

I just got a CGX mount to set up in my POD observatory. I live in Maine where winter temperatures can get down to -30, -40 f. Will it do any damage to the mount to be in that cold? Will it be usable at below freezing temperatures?

Hello Marsha

Mine has been out in below 0°C but never down to anything approaching -30°C!

It would be nice to think that Celestron have tested the CGX at design stage to operate at very low temperatures!

Good luck with your CGX, it is an accurate, robust mount.

Regards

Graeme

I have had my ASGT mount out at -35°C (-31°F) and it worked well though I had to do a tear down to replace the factory Synta goo they call grease.
If the factory grease is still the same will get quite hard in the cold and can help wear down motors quickly.

yeah i would be looking at grease properties and or even maybe some heating, just might improve some tracking , i don't realy see any other problems other then the grease or mesh adjustment .

Besides the mount you may want to check if your hand controller operates at those temperatures, if you use one. I recall discussions on the AF where this appeared to be a problem with Nexstar.

If using the hand controller it will be fairly useless at temperatures approaching -18°C (0°F) without heat of some kind.
Celestron LCD screens desperately needs a upgrade.

Kendrick Astro (Canada) makes a excellent heater designed for keeping these warm.

What Gabrielle said. I have an older CG4 (mid 90's) which I use for about 7 scopes. Here it can easily drop to -40C (that's the temperature where Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same) or more, and Gabby is right; you might want to put some other kind of grease in that. If you don't, it's OK but gets a little stiff. I don't have electronics on mine; all manual, but the RA/Dec axis are noticeably harder to turn. It starts getting stiffer at about -20C (-4F).
Henk is right if you have electronics on it; I took some pics of a lunar eclipse January 20th, 2019 when it was -42C, not including the wind chill. The shutter on my then Canon T3 sounded so slow; I'm amazed it worked

Yeah, these northern latitudes....

All the best,

A more acute problem is the plastic on the wires and cords. It can get pretty brittle down at those temps. It will snap, rather than bend.
Be very careful with cable routing and don't mess with it too much after getting it straightened out

A small remedy for temp that works is to keep an incandescent bulb (100W) burning all the time you are not in your obsy. It can keep the inside significantly warmer than -40°F assuming there is not a lot of airflow through your obsy. I know it sounds like a waste of energy, but it is a fairly cheap heater that consumes a lot less electricity than your standard metal element heater.

Cheers,
JT

I will be using starsense and skyportal wifi which I will keep in the house and just take it with me into the pod. Has anyone ever used a heat pad to keep the mount warm?

I did not use a heat pad but did use two extra heating strips, one on each axis to keep some heat going into the mount/ grease.
It seemed to help.

The newer celestron mounts that i've seen have descent grease instead of the old cosmolene feeling stuff. Mount will be fine but hand control display will be gone way before -30. It survives just fine but scrambles when it's extremely cold. Some use hand warmers to keep it warm enough to display correctly.