Jeroen Smaal wrote:

The 5" Celestron SCTs have a very good reputation regarding optical quality.
I also have a much higher opinion of Celestron's quality control.

Maybe... But seeing such an unsound engineering design kind of makes
me lose all faith in their technical competence.

Frankly, I don't know what the hell were Celestron engineers thinking
when they did that; I'm no mechanical engineer, but the design of
that support is, IMO, plain retarded.

As long as the single support is strong enough, it doesn't matter.

I'm not sure it doesn't matter. It matters less than if it was a
heavy unit, but I wouldn't say it doesn't matter.

In comparison, any telescope on a German Equatorial mount has exactly the
same single support.

Not at all!!! The GEM has support in the center of mass (roughly),
and the support can be wide enough to behave close to a dual-point
support (yes, never as solid as a fork support, but not like a
single point support)

Just imagine driving through a bridge that has supporting pillars
only on one side of the way...

???

This is how bridges a

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(cars would move in the direction perpendicular to the screen)


Here's how Celstron (well, the engineers that designed the support
for the Nextar i's) would have made bridges:


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Here's what could be the equivalent of a German Equatorial mount
with the bridge analogy:

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The GEM is not as good as the dual-point support, but not nearly
as unsound as the one-point-on-the-side support.

Carlos
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