What telescope ???

What telescope is best for Astro imaging ???
Celestron C - 14 XLT on a CGE mount OR Meade’s LX200R UHTC on fork mount ??

THANK's

Wow, Mike, if you have both and wondering which one is the best and thinking about getting rid of the other very fast, for free, to make up some room for the remaining one, give me a bell! :lol:

Seanie.

Mike,

To mind mind there is no doubt. The CGE14 wins hands down. A german equatorial mount is always better than a fork mount for imaging unless you want to image planets only in which case it doesnt really matter.

If you go with a fork mount you also need a wedge so that you can equatorially align the mount. Otherwise you end up with 'field rotation' which shows up as stars trailing around the centre to your image. No matter how well you guide your image you cannot get rid of it. If you go with a fork mounted scope you NEED the to get the wedge too. Alternatively you can get a field de-rotation unit which goes between the camera and the scope. However these are very expensive.

Do yourself a big favour and go with the german equatorial mount (like the C14) and avoid all that hassle.

I have a CGE mount and they are excellent.

Another advantage of a german equatorial mount which I almost forgot is the ability to use other telescopes on it, should you choose. You wont be able to do this with a factory fitted fork mounted scope.

Hi,
This is really 2 questions, I'd go for the LX200R OTA (having seen a new 10" recently), the mount is another matter.
I've had trouble with the periodic error of the fork mount, besides that, its behaved fine. The fact that I use a wedge puts more strain on the RA bearings, but this doesnt affect the drive performance. I do not and would certainly not recommend a field de-rotater, they are expensive and very difficult to use correctly. The wedge isa also expensive but it works fine for me, although I don't think it would work easily for a portable setup.
What I would need is about a weeks worth of clear skies to work out the PE, I just haven't had the time, I did have the fork going for about 4 minutes unguided with no errors, but then I had to open up the drive for another reason and just haven't had the time to get it all working well again (I also found and fixed a big issue with the autoguider which was messing up the guiding).
I have also heard of springy tuning fork like vibration in the fork mounts when in polar mode, but have thankfully not been affected by this, maybe because the scope is out of the wind in a dome.
The drive motors on my 12" is overloaded at high speeds given that I have other scopes piggybacked on it, so I'll be moving to a higher capacity mount over the coming months, which is going to be a equatorial mount, but I'll be keeping the 12"OTA.
If the drives were stronger and I had the PE worked out, I'd never change from this fork mount. The PE I can fix, the drives I cant.

The main drawback I see with equatorial mounts is the meridan flip and the counterweight hanging off one end, this takes up space in a dome which would otherwise be free in for fork mount setup, its not a major issue, just something to know about.
I had used an equatorial mount for visual use years ago and I just didnt like carrying around counterweights. I suppose I wouldn't have liked carrying around a wedge either if I had to