| The white-painted heavy duty LXD75 German equatorial mount is machined of aluminum for durability and high-performance photo/visual observing. Four high-precision stainless steel ball bearings support the right ascension and declination axes for smooth motion in all directions. The mount has high-accuracy DC worm gear drives and electric slow motion controls in both right ascension and declination. Precision alignment of the worm gear assemblies assures tracking smoothness and greatly reduced backlash. The supplied #497 Autostar computer control system provides fully computerized go-to object location and tracking. The Autostar hand control has a database of 30,223 objects it can find and track for you, plus many other unique features and capabilities. For full details on all of the myriad features and capabilities of the #497 computer control, click on this link. Power for the drives and computer control is supplied by a battery pack that plugs into the mount’s control panel. The pack uses eight (user-supplied) D-cell batteries that power the scope for as long as 40 hours, depending on the temperature (low temperatures reduce the usable battery life). Optional adapters with 25’ cords are available for uninterrupted AC( #RCXAC) and 12 volt DC car battery operation (#607). Snap-on covers keep the motor drives and standard equipment polar alignment scope free from dust and debris. The supplied illuminated polar viewfinder and micrometric altitude and azimuth controls allow quick, precise polar alignment. The mount comes with a 10 lb. sliding counterweight that will balance payloads of up to approximately 15 lbs. The counterweight is locked in place on the counterweight shaft by a single hand-tighten lever, making it easy to rebalance your scope if you change accessories. An additional 10 lb. counterweight (#LXDCWT) is available as an option. The LXD-75 mount includes an adjustable height tripod with tubular chromed steel legs. Each leg has two anodized aluminum leg locks with an internal brake to eliminate accidental slippage of the internal extending leg section. These locks face inwards to prevent snagging your clothing or gouging your shin as often happens when running into outward-facing leg locks in the dark. A center leg brace adds rigidity and excellent damping characteristics. A set of optional #895 vibration suppression pads under the tripod feet will even further improve telescope damping time for steadier high power observing. The center leg brace is drilled to form a convenient accessory tray that holds three 1.25" eyepieces to keep them up out of the dew-soaked grass. You can add an optional Deep Sky Imager II (#ASDSI2) or higher CCD color imager to your LXD-75 mount for long exposure astrophotography. This full-color electronic camera comes with an Autostar Suite software package that will integrate the telescope with your PC or laptop computer for an enhanced range of performance features. It includes a planetarium program with a database of 19,000,000 stars and deep space objects for display on your computer screen. It includes all the standard planetarium program features for stand-alone computer use when nights are cloudy. In addition, if you connect the telescope to your computer (using the supplied cable), the program lets you click on objects in the sky map display on your computer screen and have your telescope automatically slew to those objects. The Autostar Suite Software includes “Drizzle" software originally developed by NASA for processing images from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Drizzle software program corrects field rotation in your long exposure deep space images. Instead of just tracking and stacking images by following the movements of one star, the supplied Envisage Software with Drizzle tracks and stacks images locked on two stars. This corrects for the image rotation that can streak the star images during conventional imaging if you have not precisely polar aligned your telescope. The LXD-75 comes without an optics mounting plate, should you already have one on your existing optical tube. If you do not have an existing dovetail plate on your optics, or if it is not the appropriate width (1.6" to 1.75") to fit the LXD-75 mount dovetail slot, an optional dovetail saddle plate (#LXDSP) is available for mounting your optical tube. This dovetail plate allows exceptionally fast setup and takedown times, as a single large hand-tighten knob holds the optical tube in place. A second lock knob prevents the tube from sliding off the mount should the hand-tighten knob loosen.
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