Mounts

The HPS-series mounts are equipped with a pair of ultra-high resolution absolute encoders, directly mounted at the right ascension and declination axis. This technology has already been used in professional observatories, where high costs and complexity is not an issue. Measuring the rotation angles of the axes directly allows to compensate for most of the mechanical errors, such as periodic errors and transmission backlash. However, this requires systems with very high resolution.

In the past few years this technology could also be found in amateur astronomers‘ instruments, often paired with the use of direct drive technology where motors are mounted directly on the mount‘s axes – without any mechanical reduction gear.

10Micron GM mounts continue to feature the traditional worm to wormwheel drive solution, while pairing it with state of the art encoder technology. The encoders do their job with 1/10 arcsecond resolution. This enables GM mounts to perform at the same level of precision as professional direct-drive mounts (without any mechanical drive) but without all the downsides of a mount only controlled by electronically manipulating magnetic fields. 10micron mounts need no homing and are much less prone to motor stall and adverse balancing conditions or heavy windload/gusts than direct-drive mounts.

For your remote observatory a GM-mount is a workhorse – not a primaballerina.