Design a German Equatorial Mount for the Planetary Telescope

摘要

After a question from a planetary observer/telescope maker was posed to me concerning telescope mounts a reference came to mind that may interest other telescope makers, Fred Tretta published a paper in the Riverside Telescope Makers Conference at 1980 that detailed the mathematical treatment of this fascinating subject Tretta, 1980. Several other related articles will be referred in this paper. Many of our colleagues build their own observing equipment or redesign and modify existing telescopes to make them more stable for high powered observing. There are several caveats and debatable aspects of telescope mount design that will be discussed in the next section There is nothing more frustrating than a shaky mount that poorly tracks the planet you are studying. For those who photograph or use CCD cameras the tracking and alignment of the telescope mount is even more important, as important as good optics. To keep a magnified image of an extended object in place during exposures the planetary telescope must be at least ten times more stable than one used for deep sky photography and hundreds of time better than for visual observing.