Telescope Reviews: Re: DSC on a binocular mount?

Digital setting circle equipped mounts document movement in two directions - right ascension and declination if an equatorial mount, and altitude and azimuth if an alt-azimuth mount. With the later type, the altitude and azimuth movement is converted to right ascension and declination coordinates for your target.

With a parallelogram mount, your azimuth pivot is relatively small on virtually all that I have seen. I believe this would tend to make the encoder accuracy somewhat difficult as it would be working with a small rotational arc. The primary pivot position in altitude is also small so that reading would face the same obstacles.

In addition you have other movements with a parallelogram mount specifically to give the binoculars more freedom of movement. Those movements would have to be "locked out" to make the digital setting circles viable.

One binocular option would be the "Light Speed Wagon". It is a large alt-azimuth mount capable of handling payloads up to 60 lbs. It has digital setting circles and the encoders are 8000+ step units. It works very well with my 20x100 Miyauchi binoculars. See photo.

Barry Simon

Edited by BarrySimon615 (05/02/04 09:45 AM)

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