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Narrator: Celestron® is proud to introduce the CGE Pro™ - the latest offering in German Equatorial mounts.
Celestron's original CGE mount has long been the favored choice of astronomy buffs and astro-photographers
...because of its stability, portability and accuracy.
While designing the new CGE Pro German Equatorial mount, Celestron engineers built on their experience with...
...the previous CGE model to deliver a brand new platform packed with features
...geared towards serious Observers and astro-photographers.
My name is Danyal Medley and I'm the principal engineer at Celestron. I'm here to talk about the CGE Pro.
It is our latest equatorial mount offering – our flagship product.
CGE pro compared to the CGE offers a lot of features, the most significant, being the load capacity:
...CGE is 45 lbs, CGE Pro is 90 lbs.
Narrator: Despite offering increased instrument capacity of 90 lbs, not including counterweights, CGE PRO is still
...easy to set up and transport by separating the mount into smaller, lighter components.
Medley: In order to hold a larger capacity the CGE Pro is a lot bigger than the CGE.
The equatorial head weights 75 lbs but it can be broken down into 2 parts.
The RA and base can separate from the deck axis. It gives you 2 pieces: 45 lbs and 30 lbs, approximately.
Narrator: Thanks to design improvements, CGE PRO can be set up by only one person.
Additionally, Polar alignment is completely tool-less due to larger hand knobs for Altitude and Azimuth adjustments.
Medley: With the CGE Pro we introduced a new feature to simplify the polar alignment process.
All-Star Polar Alignment allows you to make use of any bright star that's available on the hand control
...to do polar alignment.
Narrator: All-Star™ allows you to choose any bright star listed on the NexStar™ hand control
...to assist in accurately aligning your telescope's mount with either one of the Celestial Poles.
Using the telescope's Sync function, the mount is able to point and center a bright star with a high degree of accuracy.
Once centered, the mount will point the telescope to the position the star should be as if precisely polar-aligned.
By simply adjusting the mounts altitude and azimuth controls to re-center the star in the eyepiece,
...you are actually moving the mount's polar axis to the exact position of the North or South Celestial Pole.
Medley: In order to get really good tracking performance you had to know where all the errors were coming in
...to take away from that tracking performance.
Looking at the sources of potential problems with tracking we spent a lot of time to select a motor
...that was going to give us a good periodic error profile.
By that I mean, profile that's repeatable, correctable, and any residual errors are minimized.
That comes to buying a high quality motor with cut steel gears.
One of the things we did with the CGE Pro was to make the declination worm block spring-loaded.
That reduces your backlash, so that when you're auto-guiding, you don't have any hesitation when you
...switch directions, which auto-guiders tend to do.
In RA, we left that worm block fixed, which gives you the best performance in getting the repeatable
...periodic error profile that makes it correctable.
Narrator: With larger .75" pitch diameter worm, precision made cut-steel gears in gearboxes,
...and 7 slot skewed armature motors, the CGE Pro delivers typical tracking performance of +/-9 arc seconds,
...which can be further reduced with the mounts permanent periodic error correction.
Improved gearing and motors also provide faster slew speeds than ever before
...with a maximum slew rate of over 5°/sec.
Medley: Another feature we focused on based on feedback on the CGE was tracking passed the meridian.
CGE could not track passed the meridian, whereas CGE Pro we allowed to track 20° passed the meridian.
It still has a physical stop but a couple of degrees before that there is electrical cut-off,
...so if you are doing unattended and you happen to leave it tracking, it'll shut off.
As you know, the best part of the sky is straight up. Being able to image through the meridian is a great feature.
Narrator: Redesigned electronics of CGE PRO deliver constant regulated power to the motors
...making them capable of driving the telescope even when not perfectly balanced.
This allows the CGE Pro to have the payload capacity of that of much larger and expensive mounts
...without sacrificing smooth tracking motion and pointing accuracy across the entire sky.
Medley: In designing the CGE Pro electronics, we chose to put in the power regulation inside the mount,
...so that we don't rely so much on the quality of the power being provided.
This allows us to regulate power going to the motors, gives us a better response
...so if the mount is slightly out of balance, it's not going to affect tracking or 'go-to' performance.
Narrator: With increased payload capacity
faster slew speeds
more accurate tracking
...and the ground breaking All-Star Polar Alignment
...Celestron’s state of the art CGE Pro German Equatorial mountis a highly capable, reliable and accurate platform
...designed to fit the needs of any serious observer or astro-photographer.