About eight years ago I acquired a Celestron CGE-Pro mount, but left it sitting in a corner of my living room, behind a chair for at least three years. This mount was a gift to me by (Dr. James Herman, MD) who decided he wanted the largest Losmandy mount. Thank you Jim!

The CGE-Pro is really a large and heavy mount, and I didn’t know anything about how to set it up. These days I tend to dislike changes of any type, including everything.

And after all, I’d been successful in locating, observing, making notes and pencil sketches of well over 1,200 deep-sky objects…maybe more. I’d been manually locating objects for decades. Now why would I want to change?

It was my son who lives on the west coast and is an electrical engineer, who pushed me to begin using the CGE-Pro mount. After a couple or more years of the mount sitting in the corner of my living room….Brad wanted me to take advantage of a GoTo system.

I was continuously making up all kinds of excuses. But, but…I don’t have a Losmandy dovetail to adapt the telescope to the mount. A few days later, I received a Losmandy dovetail from OPT, via UPS.

But I need a longer hand controller cord, as the CGE-Pro was designed for a 14-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope…not a 10-inch solid-tube Newtonian. A few days later, I received a 6-foot hand controller cord.

I then said, but, but….I need at least another 10 pound counterweight. A couple or so days later, I received a Losmandy 11 pound counter-weight.

My excuses were running out.

Then my son pressured me to set goals. Oh no…what to do? I then said, but, but, but….I can’t keep the mount outside in a plastic storage shed on my deck. Brad even knew what kind of motors the mount had, the electronics and assured me that they were designed for heat and cold.

So, I took the mount out one evening with the Celestron manual and began reading.

A few nights later I again took the mount out…this time with my 10-inch Newtonian and attempted in earnest to get it going. A couple of nights later after many trials and errors, I made some progress. However, I needed to reset everything back to the factory settings. The hand controller gave me warnings, that when performing this task, all settings would be deleted! This message via the hand controller caused concern, as at that time I was a bit intimidated by this mount.

However…this was the best thing I could do, as the mount had to have all new information programed for my site. I was able to set exactly…the longitude then latitude, the time, location East Coast USA, Daylight Savings Time, and all other necessary data.

I have the Celestron SkySyn GPS, but have never used it, but felt I needed to learn how to do things manually. And also the mount is used in the same location each and every observing session. So, I got it working, and “dead-centering” all objects, with just the push of a button! Unbelievable!

So everything has been working great for years but…a couple of nights ago (June 25, 2024) I thought I could improve the accuracy of the mount and apparently made an incorrect “by mistake” entry in the dark.

The next night, I put in the object to observe and the mount seemingly lost its way. At that time, it was past midnight, so I thought best to work on it later. So, early the next morning I tried to figure out the problem. After exhausting all efforts, I decided to do the factory reset, as I’d performed several times, over the previous years. I then manually…using the hand controller re-entered all data.

All seemed to be weIl now and ready for a night of observing. I needed to observe, make notes, and sketch galaxy NGC 6703, which is not even plotted on the S&T Pocket Sky-Atlas. The mount centered this galaxy in less than a few seconds. However, I’d already observed the galaxy earlier, but wanted another sketch.

So, the mount is now back to perfection. What can I say…but life is good and I’m glad my son pushed this old fashioned observer to begin using this mount so many years ago.

A photo of that mount as following: My wife enjoys on occasion…taking photos of the moon with the 10-inch Newtonian and a DSLR camera.

I also use the mount with my 6-inch f/6 Newtonian. So easy to set up, and I feel like I’m going back in time when using this scope…to the days of my Criterion RV-6.

I thank Dr. James Herman, MD (who gave me the mount) and my son Brad for pushing me to use the mount.

A couple of mounts (at least…that I know of) probably more were gifted by Dr. Herman. Unfortunately, the following two professional instruments donated by Dr. Herman have not been used nearly as many hours of my Celestron CGE-Pro.

This telescope as following was donated to an east coast university…actually only a mile from my house. Unfortunately it is seldom if every used, due to the observatory being built on campus with too much light pollution. When it was built 30 or more years ago, the area was reasonably dark, but no longer.

Unfortunately the following telescope was located on top of Mount Potosi in Southern Nevada, and the only road to get there is listed as one of the most dangerous roads in Nevada!!!!

And to make matters worse: The land the observing complex is located on was formerly owned by the Boys Scouts of America, but has since been sold! What will happen to this incredible telescope….no one knows. A terrible waste of a great telescope.

There was even an article in Astronomy Magazine concerning this telescope. To read: Click on the following link.

https://rogerivester.com/category/mount-potosi-observing-complex-in-southern-nevada/

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This entry was posted on June 26, 2024 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Roger's Articles. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.