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John, where'd you find photos?

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Wider latitude range... yet it only does 7 to 77 degrees??

Didn't the CG5 go from 0 to 90 degrees? How to you go wider than that? Am I missing something here?

Anyway, it looks like a great mount. I liked my CG5. Hope this new mount isn't as noisy as the old one.

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Sigh. Low latitude users like myself needs more love here....

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Wider latitude range... yet it only does 7 to 77 degrees??

Didn't the CG5 go from 0 to 90 degrees? How do you go wider than that? Am I missing something here?

Anyway, it looks like a great mount. I liked my CG5. Hope this new mount isn't as noisy as the old one.

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Yep, you are.

The CG5 did not really go from 0 to 90. If you wanted to go below about 30 degrees, you had to remove the front altitude adjustment bolt, which was the first thing I had to do when I got my mount.

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Is it a Sirius/HEQ-5 derivative?

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I'd have to say "no," since it uses servos. Looks like the offspring of Mama CG5 and Daddy CGEM to me.

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Autoguider port (which the CG-5 already has)
New motors (which should mean new gearbox and therefore hopefully won't have the 8/3 period errors)

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I know this is something of a problem with the CGEM, but I have never seen nor heard tell of it in a CG5... Mr Ed, what say you?

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It is somewhat strange that the 8/3 problem has never (to my knowledge) been reported with the CG-5 that uses the same motors as the CGEM. I don't know of any reports of motor cogging either. The CGEM uses a completely different motor board than the CG-5. The CG-5 board is derived from the same family of boards used by the CGE and Nexstar mounts and that is likely what makes the difference with the cogging. However, in regards to the 8/3 issue, I suspect that the 8/3 error is there with the CG-5 but it is lost in the noise of the mount in general. The improved design, gear quality and stability of the CGEM is likely the reason why the 8/3 error is more apparent since there is no other reason that the CG-5 should not have this error.

Hopefully, they have addressed these potential issues with the new mount.

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Is it a Sirius/HEQ-5 derivative?

It sounds like Celestron has a great bundle with this new mount plus a C8 Edge HD OTA for under $2k.

I was considering an 8" Edge HD OTA to experiment with anyway. It sounds almost like I'd be nuts not to hold off a bit and get this mount + OTA bundle.

"The star of the series is the Advanced VX 8” Edge HD, which combines Celestron’s best optical design with the Advanced VX for a stellar astroimaging telescope under $2,000."

Star sense also sounds like a nifty little tool for popularizing and democratizing astronomy. So easy even a caveman can use it to align a GOTO mount.

Regards,

Jim

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Obviously if the new VX works as anticipated this will put pressure on the basic CGEM, why pay $500 more for basically 10 lbs of additional payload?!?

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The mounts are more different than the 30 pound/40 pound specs imply. Bigger gears, bearings, etc. The CGEM minus tripod weighs more than twice the weight published for the bare VX so it's substantially beefier (weighs about the rated capacity, rather than 1/2 the rated capacity). The price difference will still be justified for those wanting something more substantial - but with any luck the VX will be even more bang for the buck than the CG-5 was, and that's saying something!

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I agree that this is vastly different from the more robust CGEM design and will only compete with the CGEM as much as the CG-5 does. Its competition will be the Orions, Skywatchers and Vixens with similar configurations.

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That's a very nice "clean up" of the CG5-GT.

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Nice turn of phrase, Jim. I wish I'd said that. Yes, it's clearly an update and adds some missing features plus there may be some performance improvement as well. At $800 it could well be an even better value than the $700 CG-5GT was.

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