My telescope mount gave out during the Orion Nebula shot I set up for 3 hours

Last Saturday I had everything dialed in for a clear night. Got the mount polar aligned, camera focused, and started a 2 hour capture sequence on M42. About 45 minutes in the tracking just stopped mid frame. Turns out the declination motor gear stripped on my Sky-Watcher HEQ5. Had to pack everything up at 1am with only a handful of usable subs. Anyone else had a mount fail right when conditions were perfect?

2 comments

2 Comments

roseb4712d ago

Did your friend ever get that mount fixed? My buddy Chris had basically the same thing happen with his HEQ5 last winter. He was out at our local dark site, had three hours of imaging planned on the California Nebula, and at 11pm the RA motor just started making this grinding noise then stopped. He spent the next hour in the cold trying to figure it out. Ended up having to replace the whole worm gear assembly. He said it cost him about 150 bucks and two weeks of waiting for the part. He still brings it up whenever anyone talks about perfect imaging nights.

ivangrant12d agoTop Commenter

My buddy Dave had the same thing on his CGEM mount a couple years back. He was at a star party up in the mountains, had the Veil Nebula all framed up and guiding was perfect, then at 2am the RA drive just let out this horrible screech and quit. He tore into it the next morning with a borrowed toolkit and found one of the nylon gears had stripped its teeth clean off. He had to order a whole new gear set from some place out of California, cost him about eighty bucks and three weeks of waiting. Every time we're out imaging now he jokes about keeping a spare mount in the trunk "just in case.