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Baader Planetarium NexStar Bracket
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♦ Bracket Info. The NexStar Bracket consists of three machined aluminum parts, the clamp base, dovetail clamp, and dovetail bar. A machined adapter ring is also provided with the NexStar 114 clamp to mount to its larger fork arm. The clamp base bolts directly to the declination drive gear in place of the Celestron/Orion plastic tube clamp. The dovetail clamp mounts to the base and provides the dovetail groove and large threaded brass clamp knob (the image above shows the clamp base and dovetail clamp joined). The supplied dovetail bar is anodized black (no longer silver) and machined with a central 1/4-20 threaded hole plus two 1/4" wide central mounting slots that allow easy mounting with many telescopes and tube rings. The dovetail clamp uses the Vixen dovetail standard (i.e. Celestron, Synta, Orion, and other Vixen ‘clones’), so you can also directly attach any scope that already has a compatible dovetail bar. For attaching scopes which have mounting rings that require two mounting screws, additional mounting holes can easily be drilled into the dovetail bar flanges. There are two versions of the clamp available. The NB80 fits either the NexStar 60 or NexStar 80 mount as well as the Orion StarSeeker 70 or 80, and includes a 4.7" long aluminum dovetail bar. The NB114 is designed to fit the NexStar 114GT and the new NexStar130GT mounting as well as the Orion StarSeeker 114/130, and includes a 7.1" dovetail bar. Additional dovetail bars are available inexpensively, in two lengths (4.7" and 7.1"), to permit you to quickly exchange among multiple telescopes. Each bracket comes with illustrated instructions (its quite simple) and a 4mm metric allen wrench for installation.
"Just wanted you to know - I purchased the Baader NexStar bracket a while back, and finally got around to ordering a NexStar 80. I've attached your bracket, and mounted a Tak FS78. I also discarded the alum legs and put the mount on proper oak legs. Wonderful setup!! Easy to move around, transport, etc. and the mount handles the FS78 very easily. I'm still fiddling with the computer to fine tune the tracking and GoTo precision, but pretty decent out of the box. Thanks for a great product!!" HB Bartz ♦ Telescope Capacity One question that often arises is just how large or heavy a scope can these NexStar GT mounts adequately carry? The little NexStar/StarSeeker mounts are built surprisingly well. The fork arm is die cast aluminum, and its thick heavily ribbed cross section results in a very rigid support. The drive gears are large in diameter and machined of metal (not plastic like some inexpensive mounts), and the drive motors incorporate closed loop optical encoders. In general, the NexStar/StarSeeker GT mounts are well suited for all the 90mm and smaller refractors (under f/8), and 5" or smaller SCTs and Maksutovs (i.e. the Orion Apex 127 and smaller). While some users have been successful really loading these mounts down (one user has mounted his Astro Physics 130 EDF on an N114 mount!), we recommend keeping the total telescope weight under 10 lbs and ensuring that the drive gear tensions are properly adjusted. Shown below are a number of different scopes using the Baader Planetarium NexStar Bracket.
Click on the thumbnails below for larger images (images approx. 30 - 80 kB)
♦ NexStar Info. For more info. on the little NexStar telescopes and the Baader NexStar Bracket, go to the Links section and check out the NexStar links listed there. There you will find some more info. and reviews from other users of these brackets. One particularly handy site is Mike Swanson's NexStar Resource Site. Another great resource for NexStar users is the NexStar eGroup (Yahoo! eGroups, search on group name 'nexstar'). last updated 01/04/03 |
