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New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 9:04 pm
by c8er
Has anyone tried the new Skywatcher Solarquest mount, which claims to find and track the sun automatically? If it works as advertised its inbuilt solar auto-guiding/tracking could make it a useful mount for lightweight solar setups (stated load capacity of 4kgs).

Link here to APM telescope's webpage for the product (Skywatcher USA don't seem to have it listed but Skywatcher Europe, Canada, and Australia do).
https://www.apm-telescopes.de/en/mounts ... nt--tripod

Cheers,
Chris Morriss

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 10:15 pm
by pedro
It seems interesting for outreach.

more info at:

http://ca.skywatcher.com/product/product/solarquest/

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2018 12:06 am
by ffellah
Interesting that someone thought about it...

Franco

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2018 3:02 am
by c8er
Agena Astro have asked Skywatcher USA if they will be selling it, and told me the answer was, no they won't.

Chris M

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 8:04 pm
by marktownley
I wonder if it will stop tracking when the sun goes behind a cloud?

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:43 pm
by pedro
I ordered one and I guess I will have it this week. I will keep you guys posted.

For 300 euros it is difficult to ask for more

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:35 pm
by marktownley
That was my thought too Pedro, I quite fancy the idea of something for quick grab and go full disks that I can just carry the scope and mount out in one go (in between the clouds!) - be interesting how you get on Pedro. You don't have clouds where you are very often so give it a try covering the sensor with your hand and see if it stops tracking for me.

The only other thing that concerns me is payload, not sure it would take my 60mm scope with DS 50mm etalons on...

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:05 pm
by bart1805
The answer is in the manual:
2.3 Envioremental Influence
1. Clouds, especially thick or low clouds might reduce the accuracy of auto-pointing. They might also lead to visible drift of the Sun in the eyepiece while the SolarQuest is tracking the Sun.
2. Strong reflected light, which happens to appear within the SolarQuest’s searching path, can terminate the auto-pointing routine unexpectedly.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 6:37 am
by marktownley
Thanks Bart, I thought that might be the case.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 10:53 am
by pedro
The payload is 4Kg, I guess it will hold your 60mm scope Mark

http://www.opticalvision.co.uk/spotting ... mount.html

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 2:28 pm
by pedro
My solarquest mount arrived today. Unfortunately I will not be able to use it during the next weekend

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 2:29 pm
by pedro

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2018 10:54 am
by pedro

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 3:09 pm
by pedro
Ré, P. (2018). Sky-Watcher SolarQuest Mount. PDF

http://www.astrosurf.com/re/solarquest_ ... 181008.pdf

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 11:45 am
by skyhawk
Has been discussed here a lot
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvRG28dwnc





,..

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 11:50 am
by skyhawk
Added remote focus so that everything can be done from indoors now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7VXcG6hmFA

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 11:51 am
by skyhawk
c8er wrote: Wed Sep 12, 2018 9:04 pm Has anyone tried the new Skywatcher Solarquest mount, which claims to find and track the sun automatically? If it works as advertised its inbuilt solar auto-guiding/tracking could make it a useful mount for lightweight solar setups (stated load capacity of 4kgs).

Link here to APM telescope's webpage for the product (Skywatcher USA don't seem to have it listed but Skywatcher Europe, Canada, and Australia do).
https://www.apm-telescopes.de/en/mounts ... nt--tripod

Cheers,
Chris Morriss
If you use the search on the forum it has been discussed a lot

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2019 7:10 pm
by Martin_S
How good is it for tracking prominence animations?

Martin

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 12:50 am
by rsfoto
Martin_S wrote: Mon Dec 30, 2019 7:10 pm How good is it for tracking prominence animations?

Martin
Hi,

I do not have one but as it is a Alt/Azi mount the limb of the Sun will rotate ...

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 1:01 am
by Martin_S
Thank's Rainer ,I've been attempting solar animations With LuSol but I keep getting Image drift ,I'm looking at all options at the moment.

Martin

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 4:10 pm
by rsfoto
Martin_S wrote: Tue Dec 31, 2019 1:01 am Thank's Rainer ,I've been attempting solar animations With LuSol but I keep getting Image drift ,I'm looking at all options at the moment.

Martin
Hi Martin,

My experience from the last months with a CEM 120EC2 whch has a quite good tracking is that Solar tracking in regard to keep a spot in place is quite difficult.

Now the Sun is low and I am using custom tracking values and even so the sun drifts in RA. You will always have a drift in DEC day by day as the Sun moves in DEC ~ 45° in 180 days and then back again.

In regard to RA tracking I ahve seen that my custom tracking rate for RA varies over 6 months e.g. when the Sun in the Winter is Low and in Summer it is high. Also when you approach the horizon tracking rate must get slower and slower ( famous King Rate ) due to the refraction and all objects seem to move slower ...

I did built a Sun tracker which was connected to the guide port of my old Losmandy mounts but accuracy was a problem and after getting the new iOptron CEM 120EC2 mounts my Sun guider was obsolete as the mounts tracks better then my Sun guider was able to do.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 11:55 am
by marktownley
rsfoto wrote: Tue Dec 31, 2019 4:10 pm My experience from the last months with a CEM 120EC2 whch has a quite good tracking is that Solar tracking in regard to keep a spot in place is quite difficult.

Now the Sun is low and I am using custom tracking values and even so the sun drifts in RA. You will always have a drift in DEC day by day as the Sun moves in DEC ~ 45° in 180 days and then back again.

In regard to RA tracking I ahve seen that my custom tracking rate for RA varies over 6 months e.g. when the Sun in the Winter is Low and in Summer it is high. Also when you approach the horizon tracking rate must get slower and slower ( famous King Rate ) due to the refraction and all objects seem to move slower ...
Thanks for posting this Rainer, i've never thought about it like this before.

That drift in declination is about 0.25degree per day, and that doesn't factor in the obliquity or eccentricity of the Earths orbit, which means the rate varies throughout the year too. Likewise for RA.

'Solar tracking' on mounts is just going to be a slightly different rate than sidereal rate, and won't factor any of the above, the drive will just track in RA at a continuous rate, regardless of time of day or year, with the DEC axis just sat fixed.

No wonder we have drift in our animations, just in DEC this amounts to 30 arc seconds per hour! (on average!).

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2020 12:54 pm
by Martin_S
Thank's Rainer and Mark. I'm in the process of building a sun tracker, if it works I'll post the results in the mods section . Meanwhile I am going over to the darkside to practice guiding at night with PHD2 as I've not done guiding before.

Martin

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2020 11:43 pm
by c8er
I'm hoping that my new 10Micron GM1000 HPS GEM mount will have good solar tracking year round and at most altitudes as 10Micron say in the manual that if you use the mount's "Follow Object" tracking method (different from the usual standard solar/sidereal/lunar rates also in the hand control) that the mount will account fully for the object's proper motion in its sophisticated tracking model to custom track any solar system object, including the moon/sun/planets, and also asteroids and satellites if you have freshly updated the mount's file of current asteroid/satellite paths. The mount includes refraction effects in its modelling/tracking using temp and humidity inputs from an electronic weather unit I have plugged in to it (updated only on a slew of the mount so it doesn't cause jumps during tracking if the weather parameters change while tracking).

The mount by default tracks in both axes to make use of its sophisticated model and to still give good tracking with some amount of polar and other errors.

This is what the manual says about the "Follow Object" tracking option. "When this function is active, everytime you slew to a celestial object from the database, the apparent proper motion of the object is computed, and is set automatically as a custom tracking rate.
This is effective for all solar system objects, such as asteroids, comets, planets, the Sun and the Moon."

I haven't had a chance yet to try the mount for solar daytime work, only night work so far, but I am hoping it might even give good enough unguided tracking for solar animations, as it does so far for me for unguided deep space night imaging.

I also now have one of these little Skywatcher Solarquest mounts, and it certainly tracks the sun well for hours, and keeps itself well enough centered on one solar surface feature long enough for the usually short non-animation solar imaging runs. I wouldn't try it for time-lapse animations due to the Alt/Az field rotation, and it doesn't work for me on an Eq wedge sadly - I tried that. From memory I think it wouldn't even initially find the sun automatically, or if it did it wouldn't then track it correctly. My memory is bit hazy on which the problem was exactly, but it didn't work.

Cheers,
Chris M
New Zealand

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 10:33 am
by marktownley
As the topic is current I thought would chip in; i'm going to get of the solarquest heads. I bought the AZ GTi mount https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywat ... ripod.html initially on the grounds I could also use it as a grab and go for the occassional night time stuff I do. While it is great for night time it is a PITA for solar, it really doesn't want you to look at the sun easily or quickly using it. Have wasted so many sessions this winter when the sun has been in gaps in the trees and the mount has been an pain to get running. So, will pick up the solarquest next week instead...

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 7:07 pm
by DeepSolar64
I have thought about getting the Orion Solar Starseeker mount. It looks similar.

https://optcorp.com/products/orion-sola ... th-mount-1

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 8:29 pm
by marktownley
Looks to be the same thing just badged different...

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 6:22 am
by DeepSolar64
All,
I plan to get a new mount/tripod assembly in the near future. I am considering the Orion Solar Starseeker mount for solar and the regular Orion Starseeker GoTo Or Celestron NextStar mount for nighttime use. All are under 500 dollars US. Does anyone make one like these that will track all three lunar, solar and sidereal? On many nighttime mounts like the NextStar three objects have to be located and entered to align the scope. That's not possible during the day. The solar mounts do this by locking onto the sun but a multi-use GoTo mount would have not enough objects to go through the setup process in the daytime. Unless maybe it is GPS equipped and can use that standalone. I would like a tracking mount for my Coronado SolarMax II DS and Orion 70mm White Light Solarscope. And my nighttime use Astro-Tech 72EDII refractor. Must I buy two different mounts?

The SkyWatcher SolarQuest looks very similar to the Orion StarSeeker mount. They may indeed be the same.

James

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 7:47 am
by JochenM
Hi James

Nowadays, most mounts have a solar tracking option within their software/firmware. I have a few mounts, but my process (for solar work) is pretty much the same for every single one:

- Put down the mount and make sure it's roughly pointing north (I'm not very precise on this, just a rough visual estimate) and set the latitude on the scale/dial (whatever you call that) if it's an eq one.
- Skip any sort of alignment procedure in its totality.
- Tell the mount to slew to where it thinks the sun is (this will be a bit off usually). Correct it by manually slewing until I have the sun centered in my eyepiece/camera and confirm.
- Enable solar tracking in the firmware.
- All done.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 3:28 pm
by DeepSolar64
Thanks Jochen. Which mounts do you have? I don't rule out an equatorial mount but am eyeing altaz for simplicity.

James

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 4:06 pm
by JochenM
DeepSolar64 wrote: Thu Mar 19, 2020 3:28 pm Thanks Jochen. Which mounts do you have? I don't rule out an equatorial mount but am eyeing altaz for simplicity.

James
I have the following ones:

- Bresser EQ mount. Forgot what the thing's called exactly.
- Skywatcher AZ-EQ6
- Skywatcher AZ-GTi
- Skywatcher SolarQuest

But for solar work only, an alt-az is usually more than sufficient (assuming it's stable and can carry the weight etc obviously).

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 4:10 pm
by DeepSolar64
I have been looking at the SkyWatcher AZ-GTi. Does it have both solar and sidereal capability?

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 4:22 pm
by JochenM
It has sidereal, solar and lunar tracking.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 4:25 pm
by DeepSolar64
JochenM wrote: Thu Mar 19, 2020 4:22 pm It has sidereal, solar and lunar tracking.
Awesome!!

Does it work well for you on all three? Is it easy to align and set up?

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 4:50 pm
by JochenM
I've only ever used it for solar/lunar work.

I always just slew to the sun/moon manually, enable the relevant tracking mode and do my thing, so I can't really say much about the alignment process. Once it's on target, it tracks very well for longer periods of time though.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 7:38 pm
by marktownley
DeepSolar64 wrote: Thu Mar 19, 2020 4:10 pm I have been looking at the SkyWatcher AZ-GTi. Does it have both solar and sidereal capability?
Yes, it has solar and sidereal capability.

I have one. Personally, I don't get on with it. I bought it because I wanted something that would cater for the couple of times a year when I take a small scope to a dark sky, but for the rest of the time solar.

I don't like using my phone as the hand controller for it, so I bought the skywatcher handset for it. You can't do solar with the handset for whatever reason. I've just found myself swearing at it and packing it away when I get it out. I'm just going to get the solarquest version instead.

Clearly others might not share my experience, I get that.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 7:39 pm
by marktownley
JochenM wrote: Thu Mar 19, 2020 4:50 pm I've only ever used it for solar/lunar work.

I always just slew to the sun/moon manually, enable the relevant tracking mode and do my thing, so I can't really say much about the alignment process. Once it's on target, it tracks very well for longer periods of time though.
Maybe I need to try this!

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 3:27 am
by Martin_S
Mark , I too have the AZGTi, I might as well use it as a doorstop, mainly due to the absence of an ST4 guide port. If someone ever comes up with an ST4
interface that could plug into the handset port, then that would be a real game changer. We could then use our solar auto guiders and have a great portable mount.

The AZGTi works with pulse guiding with PHD2. I have tried Lusol Guide with pulse guiding on the AZGTi and could not get it to work.

Martin

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 4:41 am
by DeepSolar64
Thanks Jochen, Mark and Martin. I would use it mainly for visual so my demands would probably be less. But is would still need to be easy to use and have decent tracking and GoTo capability. I have 4 scopes to use with it, the Orion ST90 being the largest. But it is actually a tad bit lighter than my double-stacked SolarMax II 60.

James

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:09 am
by Martin_S
James , just take note the Solarquest and AZGTi have a payload of 5kg max. The supplied tripod with a 5kg load is top heavy. I would be wary of mounting an expensive telescope on this tripod.

I made a heavy duty pier mount for mine.

Martin
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Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 5:41 am
by DeepSolar64
Thank you for the advice Martin. Your home-built pier does look very stable.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2020 11:37 pm
by solarchat
Sorry I’m late responding to this.
I have been using this mount for about six months with an L bracket carrying a PST and a shelyak spectrograph.
It works perfectly every time, automatically finds and tracks the sun, and with a metal L bracket holds up the payload very securely.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 9:12 pm
by DeepSolar64
I sure could use one of these with my SMII60 and new ZWO camera. Certainly on my “ to get “ list. Either it or the SW AZGTI.

Re: New Skywatcher Solarquest mount

Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 6:12 am
by c8er
I've been using mine with no problems for a good length of time now, an excellent little solar mount that tracks really well, for hours, and always auto finds the sun quickly and accurately for me at the start of a session. Definitely needs a better tripod, but at the price point that isn't unexpected. I use mine on a decent camera tripod with 3/8ths thread, with some extra weight hanging underneath the tripod to stop it tipping over since it carries some gear that is worth a bit. It carries a Coronado SM60 II DS just fine for me, or an ED80 with a Quark. It's one real letdown is that they didn't give it an Eq/wedge option so we could use it without field rotation for timelapse animation captures of prom and active area etc changes over a few hours. It tracks well enough for that for me but can't be used for it due to the Alt/Az field rotation. Other than that small frustration I'm finding it a very compact, reliable, accurate, and simple to use mount that without fuss just does what it says on the tin.

Image (inverted) captured a few days ago using it with the ED80/Quark combination.

Cheers,
Chris M
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