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The Astro-Tech short universal plate is designed primarily to hold the mounting rings of shorter focal length Astro-Tech, TeleVue, Parks, Takahashi, Vixen, and Meade refractors. It will also hold the mounting rings of the smaller Astro-Tech, Questar, Meade, and Celestron catadioptric optical tubes.

The dovetail has a series of 19 unthreaded 6.9mm diameter mounting holes for attaching rings and other accessories using 1/4”-20 or metric bolts. One hole is on the plate’s centerline, plus there are 9 pairs of holes on 60mm centers extending the length of the plate. The engineering drawing in the feature image below shows the spacing of the mounting hole pairs. There is also a 0.25” wide x 5” long slot on the plate’s centerline. Its location is also shown in the engineering drawing. This combination of mounting holes and slot allows you to install virtually any configuration of mounting rings.

The holes and slots are all countersunk on the underside of the dovetail. This assures that the bolts holding the mounting rings will not protrude and keep the dovetail plate from sliding back and forth in the mount saddle for balancing. As a thoughtful touch, the corners of the dovetail are slightly rounded to keep them from digging into the saddle and hanging up if the dovetail is not perfectly straight when it is installed on the mount.

There is a 1/4”-20 thread hole at each end of the plate. This lets you thread 1/4”-20 bolts into the holes to act as safety stops. These will keep the dovetail from sliding out of the mount saddle unexpectedly should the mount’s locking knob loosen accidentally.

The 0.5” thick dovetail is precision-machined of aluminum stock. It measures 7.9” long x 4” wide overall and is anodized black for good looks and durability. It weighs 1.15 lbs.