I'd been looking at this mount as a grab and go mount for a couple of telescopes and portable DSLR /lens mount that I can take into the field. My other mount is a Losmandy G-11 and while it works great and is accurate as hell with good tracking, it's not the most portable mount in existence.
I wanted something that I could take to Joshua Tree and hike for a mile or so to set up for a night of imaging. At 8 lbs the AZ-GTi certainly fits the bill of portability. It runs on 8 AA batteries so power is not a problem.
The AZ-Gti can run in Alt Az mode (it's normal set up) or EQ mode with an optional wedge and firmware upgrade.
I purchased the wedge since I knew I was going to use it primarily for imaging and only occasionally for visual.
I tried doing the firmware the first day I had it and it failed. I had to bring the unit to Skywatcher and have them do the firmware up grade. Once that was done I set it up for first light. I don't have the best views from my back yard but I was able to see the winter jewels of Orion and Canis major. I opted for M42 first and doing a rough polar alignment (being able to have Polaris in the center of my K-1 and 150-450 combination at 450mm should suffice for a polar alignment. I entered Sirius as the alignment star in the Synscan app and off the mount went. there was Sirius in the F.O.V of the live view screen. I then went to Orion and there was the nebula right where I expected it. So far so good. here's the first shot aside from Focusing the lens. 30 sec ISO 800 f/5.6 450mm
M41 after I adjusted the polar alignment with the routine built into the app. 30 sec ISO 800 f/5.6 450mm
74 Seconds.
A couple of items of note. Focusing the lens even with live view at 16x is tough. A bahtinov mask would help. 2: the tracking is set to 50% of sidereal by default. Changing that to fill sidereal helped. The tracking in EQ mode is great for visual a bit loose for imaging. Guiding the mount would help. I don't know if it can be done however.Maybe with the hand controller.
