TheSkySearchers

I was kind of astonished when I got my "state-of-the-art" mount and I had to learn everything the hard way. I have a friend who has done almost all of his wish list. Not sure about the automatic leveling. He uses a Raspberry Pi on the mount, no laptop required.

To me, learning all of those extra things was/ is part of the fun.
What do you actually accomplish or learn by setting the mount up and pressing one button?
Ease of use +1, expanding your knowledge 0.

The Vixen Starbook 10 with Advanced Unit stores all the images on SD card so there is no computer required.

Sorry I can't buy into this one. For visual and visual only I can agree with a little less than half. For astrophotograpy I just can't buy into hands off automation of complete setup, run, and tear-down.. The extreme accuracy in tracking, nuances of determining exposures, filters, flats, lights, etc... demand a different approach. Integrity, tracking, rigidity, reliability, and ease of use are so much more important. When contemplating attributes to incorporate into a mount if you start with a modest load then add the attributes that say an AstroPhysics mount has and on top of that all the high precision automation you have a monster. First if it truly does it all extremely well it will be astronomically expensive. The mount would be ridiculously complex and heavy if designed for critical astrophotography while totally automated for setup and tear-down each session. As a designer fabricator I can see a mount like this easily retailing for north of $250,000 in a limited production run of say ten units to hold a load of about a 140mm refractor and gear. Compare a new Mach 2 all in might be $9000 and with an experienced human helper it will do every bit as well for so much less.

Bruce

This is about expensive stuff that I will probably never have. I have to use the cheapest EQ but I'm telling you that even it is in bad need of a make over and upgrade.

Me either. To me it’s kind of like dummying down. Heck, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it and everyone would be getting great images. Do you want to catch fish every time you go? No, there has to be challenges or it would be too easy to be fun.

Gabby is right. Half of the fun and challenges are figuring out how things work on your own. I remember the first night that I successfully drift aligned. I don’t think that I imaged anything, I just accomplished a successful drift align and was thrilled.

I have had many nights like that where simply learning or figuring out a technique was a thrilling adventure.

We have pretty decent equipment out there at very reasonable prices that can allow someone that puts in the time, effort, and frustration (and with a little luck) to accomplish amateur astrophotographs that were impossible a few short years ago.

On the other side, I really like Dylan and watch his YouTube channel. One day soon, there will be a mount like he described and it will eventually be affordable. Just how technology moves.

Thanks,
Jim

Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!

The topic of devolution does seem to come up a lot.

I guess one could take the machismo approach and polar align your scope uphill both ways in the winter with an onion on your belt, but there is a point where practicality demands a better solution.

For example, I'm a mobile imager, both at home and anywhere I can image. At home, there are only 2 places, both in my front yard, which offer a passable opening through the tree canopy to photograph objects that pass east to west at zenith. As much as I'd love a permanent setup that's out of sight from the road, it's just not practical without a tree cutting expense that's well into 5 figures as well as cooperative neighbors. If what I want to image does not pass through the opening I have, I must drive somewhere else. And I must set all this up with ample enough time to drift align, because the NCP is blocked by trees; one of them a 120 year old Willow Oak.

So when I set up to image, I'm not doing it to relive some nostalgic ritual of carefully hand-aligning my telescope and thinking I'm a better man because of it. I've done all that, a zillion and one times, with more mounts and polar scope types than I care to enumerate. Rather, I'm setting up to start putting photons to silicon, and anything which shortens my path to that is massive positive in my book.