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ChronosMount HD20 from Astrosource (UK)

This innovative mounting is based on a stable, compact alt-azimuth design comparable to those used on all new large professional telescopes. This design provides an optimal ratio between stability/capacity and physical size/weight.

Please contact us to check availability or to place your order. Price £Contact us for the very best prices

Product overview

When it comes to serious visual astronomy, and particularly high quality CCD imaging, all telescope systems require a the use of counterweights. This is simply a necessity to keep the mount balanced and can involve a huge array of different weights and sizes. With the revolutionary new ChronosMount design, your approach will be changed forever, because now it is possible to switch between visual and CCD imaging while the mount is still being autoguided. How can you manage to change all of the components and still keep tracking? Because there are no counterweights involved in the process to drag your system down. ChronosMount chose to put more metal in the mount structure and forego the counterweights. By eliminating counterweights, ChronosMount has increased the mount's total load capacity and unleashed the balance burden.

Conventional worm-and-wheel and spur gearing, integral to all astronomical telescope mounts until now, have backlash. It's a fact. Elaborate systems have been 'invented' to counteract this basic flaw. ChronosMount uses harmonic drive gearing and that means no backlash. Harmonic drives are on the rovers on Mars and keep the adaptive optics aligned on Mauna Kea ... And now harmonic drives are available for your telescope.

What makes the harmonic drive work? One-third of the 320 teeth on a harmonic drive unit are engaged at all times, while on worm-and-wheel and spur gearing, there is a maximum of three teeth engaged. This results in extremely smooth operation over the full 360º of rotation compared to the rough and irregular characteristics of conventional gearing. PEC is the process of filtering out the mechanical errors in the gearing that drives the worm on worm-and-wheel gearing in a telescope mount.

Our tests show that the out-of-the-box PEC of a harmonic drive is significantly smoother than worm-and-wheel gearing. In other words, without applying any PEC, harmonic drives are smooth enough to enable effective autoguiding. Additionally, the periodic error period is 14.4 minutes, much longer than the 2.5 - 4 minute period of worm-and-wheel gearing. This improves the autoguiding accuracy as well, because the amount of guiding necessary per minute is much, much less. Chronos only requires 0.51 arcsecond corrections per minute. This is less than half the competition!

Clutches on a telescope mount can introduce a number of opportunities for drive inaccuracies. The reality check is that clutches can slip, causing a loss of position. As clutches are opened and closed, the relationship between the optical path and the gears changes. The specific teeth you used last night are not the same teeth you use tonight to look at the same place in the sky! When permanently mounted, the same harmonic drive teeth are always in the same position in relation to the sky. Periodic error correction inconsistencies are introduced when different gear teeth are used.

With a ChronosMount you get a full 90º of Latitude adjustment, which means it can be used anywhere on Earth without add-on hardware. No polar alignment scope is ever needed. With Chronos, you use the main telescope as the polar alignment scope. A simple two-iteration alignment (alignment star/pole star) will result in an accurate enough polar alignment for all CCD imaging requirements. For a more accurate alignment, you simply use the software or use the drift method. ChronosMount's managed wiring system means everything is securing inside the totally closed metal tube. There's nothing to get caught up in moving parts.

ChronosCentral is the brains behind the brawn. Integral to ChronosMount is an off-the-shelf servo control system that uses industry-standard electronics and microprocessors. Astronomy-specific functions include a five button handpad for slewing at Guide, Position, and High Speed rates as well as Sidereal tracking without attaching any additional hardware or a computer. Maximum slew speed is 5º per second and there's a stand-alone autoguider port with dry-contact closure protocols and RJ12 pinouts. ChronosMount has included an emergency stop system and an LED slew speed indicator, too. An ASCOM driver is included for use with your favorite PC-based planetarium program, OSX, or Linux. But, because everyone's tastes are different, the planetarium software and PC are not included with ChronosMount.

We provide a five-button handpad to control the mount when using an optional PC with ASCOM planetarium software installed. At your fingertips you have catalogs which include GSC/GSC2/Hipparcos Catalogs, Vizier Catalogs/Cross Reference, Supernovae and Variable Stars, Asteroids (ephemerides and trails), Comets (ephemerides and trails), NGC/IC, Hires Clementine Moon Maps and the Messier Objects. When you're operating you can go into modes, such as Tours, Planning, DSS Images, SDSS Images, Real Time Internet Data, Calculators, Internetware, Themes and User Profiles, Hires Clementine Moon Maps, RealSky Images, Colored Stars by Spectral Type, Compatible Aith Aladin Sky Atlas and Real-time updates of asteroid and supernovae data. Want to do your own thing? You can. ChronosMount ChronosCentral includes a PlanMaker feature and allows for optional HP hx2795b iPAQ PDA and Bluetooth wireless connections.