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The Sky Tracker drive system is the most important advancement in large
aperture telescopes for amateur astronomers since John Dobson
introduced his mount! You just can't imagine how cool it is to
view Jupiter at 1,000X through a 24" telescope and have it stay in the
center of the eyepiece without having to keep nudging the secondary
cage. And the amount of additional detail you can see is
amazing! It's just as amazing on a 14.5" scope, too.
How does it work?
In a word -- Easily!
Simply
enter the object you wish to view into the Sky Commander, then push the
Goto Button on the Sky Tracker's hand controller. That's
it! The scope will automatically slew to the object and begin
tracking. If the object is off to one side of the eyepiece, use
the arrow keys to center it.
The
Sky Tracker operates off a small gel cell battery stored in the rocker
box that will run the system for about 8 hours. The Sky Tracker
adds only 11 pounds to the weight of the rocker box and 3 inches to its
width. It's completely self contained -- no wires running from
the scope to an external computer or battery to get wrapped around the
scope or for you to trip over.
Want
to move to a nearby object? Switch to Utility Mode and power slew
to it. Then switch back to track mode, no matter where you are in
the sky, and the scope will track properly. When you're done,
simply hit the Goto Button and the scope will go back to the last
object had entered into the Sky Commander.
Want
to do a little old fashioned star hopping? No problem -- the Sky
Tracker does not effect the scope's balance or motions! All you
have to do is turn a small lever to disengage each of the two drive
motors and have fun. When you're finished, reengage the motors,
switch back to Track Mode and the scope will keep whatever object is in
the eyepiece centered -- no need to realign as the Sky Tracker still
know where it is! And if your hit the Goto Button, it'll go right
back to the last object entered into the Sky Commander.
That's
the nut shell view. To learn more, click on any of the pictures
to take a Virtual Tours of the components (Flash plugin required
-- if the logo at the top of the page changes colors, you already have
it). All of these pictures are of a 16" scope, but the components
and installation are the same for all truss scopes.
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