Motorised focusser with built in Field De-rotator

Word on the street is that one of the big guns which I assume to mean Feathertouch or Moonlite will be announcing very soon a new motorised focusser with built in Field De-rotator!!

How cool will that be!!

I can picture myself in a year or two starting to image with one of these in combo with my Lightbridge servocat/argo with the servocat autoguided by an autogiuder in a stellarvue F80M finderscope!!

Obviously the images produced can never be anywhere near as good as a proper astrograph on an off axis autoguided beafy GEM but hey, I'll be able to take some half decent long exposure shots with a DOB!!!

Hopefully this wont mean the price of a Moonlite motorised focusser + the cost of a Phyxis De-rotator. OVer 1000 for a focusser? No thanks. But if we are talking around 500... Well count me in!! :laugh:

Nice!, but I cant see that been cheap.

Well it'll certainly probably be the most expensive focusser out there but will it be as expensive as a separate motorised focusser + Phyxis de-rotator?

A focuser with a rotator sounds expensive to me. Mechanically, that's got to be difficult and it may also involve special software to figure out how much to de-rotate depending where you are pointing in the sky...

One advantage of such a beast would be to reduce weight by combining two pieces of kit but as I've said, it actually doesn't make much sense to me as to why any vendor would want to do that.

Bear in mind that with a large light-sucking mirror, you're exposures need only be short so as long as your drive is accurate and has good periodic error, there should be no need for a rotator. Most folks AFAIK only have rotators to make sure they can get decent guide stars onto their off-axis guiders...

500 quid? Very unlikely. The price of a rotator plus a focuser? Maybe but I wouldn;t hold my breath.

Where did you get the info?

Dave Bonadini over on cloudy nights forums in a thread about EQ platforms in the Reflectors section. Seams to be a respected member and reviewer over there. He said he heard it from someone involved with the product at one of the big Star Parties but was told to keep stumm :laugh: The conversation in the thread had turned to field rotation with al az drives instead of EQ platforms when he brought this titbit of info up.

As well as space savings would there possible be savings in available focus travel with the thing built in.

I don't actually see the point myself unless there are savings to made by the purchaser over purchasing a decent focusser and separate de-rotator.

Just read that it interfaces with a servocat for rotation speed inputs. ie servocat tells it how much to rotate. I assume the servocat itself is getting the info it needs for this from an argo navis. It actually stands to reason that the servocat would be supported as the people most likely to need a de-rotator would be driven alt az owners with servocat being the most popular fully featured alt az motor system