Sky & Telescope - October 2020 - 66

S&T Test Report by Dennis di Cicco

Sky-Watcher's EQ8-R Pro Mount
EQ8-R Pro Mount
U.S. Price: $4,050 (equatorial head and
counterweights)
skywatcherusa.com

What We Like
Extremely solid mount
Accurate tracking and Go To
performance
Very quiet slewing

What We Don't Like
Needs better software for
remote operation and use with
planetarium programs

"WHAT TELESCOPE DID YOU USE?"

someone called out as one of our
astronomy club members projected a
photograph of the Dumbbell Nebula on
the screen during a show-and-tell session. "That's not the question to ask,"
came the reply. "What you really should
ask is what mount did I use?"
That unexpected response was so
spot-on that now, more than 50 years
later, it still rattles around in my head
whenever I hear someone ask what
telescope was used to create a stunning
deep-sky image. As a beginning astrophotographer, I quickly learned that
a telescope's mount and drive system
played more of a role in creating a successful long-exposure photograph than
did the scope's optics. And with few
commercial options available back then,
most of the leading astrophotographers
- Clarence Custer, George Keene, Alan
McClure, and Henry Paul, to name a
few luminaries - were building their
own equipment.
Times have changed. Driven by the
increasing interest in deep-sky photography that began in the 1970s and
accelerated into the 21st century fueled
by digital imaging, today there's an
abundance of excellent commercial
mounts tailor-made for imaging setups,
whether they be as lightweight as a
camera and lens or as massive as the
largest observatory astrographs.
One of the newest mounts to enter
the mid-heavyweight category is the
EQ8-R Pro from Sky-Watcher, a company with a reputation for making quality products with attractive price tags.
W Sky-Watcher's new EQ8-R Pro German
equatorial mount has a rated capacity of up to
110 pounds and is equally suited for use in a
permanent observatory setting or assembled in
the field for portable use.

OCTOBER 2 02 0 * SK Y & TELESCOPE

The EQ8-R Pro is rated for equipment
weighing up to 110 pounds (50 kg). It's
also massive itself, with the equatorial head alone tipping the scales at 57
pounds, and the counterweight shaft
and a pair of 22-pound counterweights
adding a total of 52 pounds more. The
optional tripod/pier ($950 when ordered
with the EQ8-R Pro) weighs 65 pounds,
and even the adjustable footpads for the
tripod legs are a hefty 4 pounds each.
This stuff is all solidly made.
The most obvious beneﬁt of this
weight is stability. The EQ8-R Pro
proved to be an exceptionally good platform for astrophotography. And while
it should be a no-brainer to think that
any mount good enough for long-exposure imaging would be good for visual
observing too, it took a pandemic to
make that point to me beyond a shadow
of a doubt. More about that later.
You'll ﬁnd a full list of speciﬁcations
for the EQ8-R Pro on the Sky-Watcher
website, so I'll mention just a few here.
The mount requires a power source
that delivers between 11 and 16 volts
DC with at least a 3-amp capacity,
which means it will run ﬁne off of a
car battery. There's an optional polaralignment scope ($160) that bolts onto
the mount's declination-axis housing.
But I've become a big fan of electronic
polar scopes such as the PoleMaster
from QHYCCD or the iPolar from iOptron, since they are fast, accurate, and
don't require you to be a back-bending
contortionist to use them.
The EQ8-R Pro equatorial head has
very robust adjustments for azimuth
and especially altitude when doing polar
alignment. They worked smoothly even
when the mount was loaded with a
telescope and counterweights, which is
my preferred conﬁguration when dial-

A LL PHOTOS BY THE AU THOR

This mid-heavyweight German equatorial mount is equally suited for use in the ﬁeld
or permanently installed in an observatory.

http://www.skywatcherusa.com

Sky & Telescope - October 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - October 2020