I’ve seen discussion of that rule of thumb before. There are also discussions
that claim some of the newer mounts are capable of handling the specified max
payload. It’s hard to tell what antidotes apply anymore. The lack of real,
measured numbers makes this engineer want to pull his hair out! :-)
But I agree with the general idea of pushing things to their specified limit.
Which is one of the things that’s a negative with a mount like the CEM25EC. It
lookalike it’d solve some of my guiding issues. But my 18 lbs payload might be
pushing its 25 lbs limit. Or might not be. Or the one I get doesn’t hold as
much as the one someone else got. Or … Argh! There goes another handful of
hair! :-)
Mike McDonald
mikemac@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Mar 22, 2019, at 1:19 PM, Erik Basilier <ebasilier@xxxxxxx> wrote:--
There is plenty of wisdom about mount limitations to be found in old threads
on Cloudy Nights. E.g. there seemed to be general agreement that the weight
limits given for low-to-medium level mounts should be thought of as maximums
for visual use, and for astrophotography such as you are doing, one should
divide by 2. OTOH for top brand mounts, those would do astrophotography up to
the published weight limits.
