Meade MAX Robotic German Equatorial Mount

CAPACITYTotal Mount Capacity is 250 lbs (excluding counterweights). This type of carrying capacity exceeds anything else on the market. To get this type of capacity in a production mount means you do not have to contract for a one-off design for large aperture instruments. Furthermore it means that you will be able to add guide scopes wide field instruments spectrographs heavy cameras and coolers to this mount with confidence.INTERCHANGEABLE QUICK RELEASE DOVETAIL PLATESThe quick release dovetail plate on the MAX MountT allows you to change optical instruments in about two minutes. Slew the scope down for access loosen two handles without any tools required and swap on a new instrument ensemble. This is the kind of flexibility that makes German mounts so popular in theory but only MAX delivers in practice. With the MAX quick release system swapping scopes takes only minutes. You will not lose alignment. Additionally the computer assisted balancing and quick release counter weights assure you are tuned up and ready to go back to work quickly.With competing mounts you are looking at a milled and drilled plate Allen wrenches and a lot of time and care to swap OTA assemblies. Then you must support the OTA while you release the worm gears to rebalance losing your alignment in process.INTERNAL CABLINGThe MAX has all the controls you need for your OTA and modern cameras up on the saddle plate. This makes a cable free installation of most instrument packages.In contrast competing mounts require that you get out your fish tape and pull the cable you want through the RA and DEC axis yourself. Or you might want to call an electrician! PERIODIC ERROR (PE)Low periodic error means that you will have to guide the scope less during extended exposures. When you get PE down to about 2 arc seconds you have a PE below the sky scintillation (seeing) on most nights. This means that exposures of a minute or so can be made with no guiding required. For Deep Sky ImagerT users snap shooters supernova hunters asteroid researchers variable star studies and a variety of research projects the mount is simply point and shoot. Coupled with the Smart Mount system to insure pointing accuracy below 1 arc minute it eliminates the need to center and guide short exposures vastly increasing the productivity of the telescope in these applications.LATITUDE 0 - 90 DEGREESThis mount can be used anywhere on Earth from Pole to Pole. No other maker of heavy duty mounts can make this claim. GEAR DIAMETER WITH 652 TEETHLarge gears are important for several reasons. It means that the shearing forces on the worm assembly are reduced proportionally as the gear diameter increases. This translates to a mount that can carry more load. More teeth mean that the worm turns more quickly and the effect of Periodic Error decreases in proportion to the tooth count. For gears of the same tolerances our gears will have nearly half the Periodic Error of a 360 tooth gear such as found in the competing Mounts. Also maintaining the same gear diameter in the RA and DEC assure the same mechanical robustness and accuracy in both axes this is not the case when you drop the DEC gear diameter by 1/3 as in competing Mounts.EXPANDED AUTOSTAR SUITE WITH NETWORK AND WEB CONTROLMAX is delivered with Autostar Suite Version 4. It is a complete turnkey observatory control system not an added cost extra. The package includes extensions that allow the scope to be remotely controlled from any web browser without software installation on the remote PC MAC PDA or even a cell phone. This kind of convenience makes it ideal for teaching environments where lab workstations can operate the scope from any classroom without extensive software setup.

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