The M-Uno is an exciting and innovative new mount for high precision astro photography.
It is made in Italy by DAL SASSO Srl, a company with more than 30 years of experience in the field of high precision mechanics and marketed with the AVALON INSTRUMENTS trademark.
The M-Uno design has abandoned the traditional worm and gear arrangement in favour of a new transmission system based on pulleys and tooth belts, for both right ascension and declination.
This belt driven design produces various benefits over the traditional geared designs including
Very consistent motion, without play and the sudden peaks associated with traditional mounts, these are factors that are of particular importance for long exposure deep sky astro imaging.
Traditional mounts always suffer from backlash to a greater or lesser extent particularly in the declination axis The Linear Belt driven transmission system can now quickly reverse the Declination motion, without any backlash This is the reason for the name: FAST REVERSE.
It is wortwhile stressing that, since the motion transmission in traditional gear-worm systems have just one contact point, any error on each of the two components will, sooner or later, result in tracking errors.
However, with the pulley-tooth belt system, no direct contact occurs and the motion is transmitted by the belt working with some 50% to 90% of the girth surface. Consequently, any errors are balanced among the cogs, and are lower in amplitude with respect to the geared ones
We have been testing the mount and have found even with very long focal length telescopes by adopting a low guide rate of 0.125x sidereal the M-Uno mount delivery pinpoint round stars over long exposures.
The single fork arm also means that there are no meridian flip issues as is the case with German Equatorial mounts and thus the mount will track a target from East through the Meridan into the West uninterrupted.
Another advantage of the single fork arm design is the absence of a long counterweight shaft. In an observatory in particular this frees up a significant amount of room.
No wear, No Friction.
No wearing effects will occur since no friction occurs amongst the various parts. In fact, the pulleys and the axes rotate on roller bearings, 13 for the right ascension, 12 for the declination. The tooth belts are the same as used in car engines (with steel core), which are designed to work for 100.000 Km at an average speed of 2000 rpm, facing a 0-100°C thermal range in a few minutes. Compared to that, the stress supported by the belts working on these mounts is extremely low guaranteeing almost eternal life !
The mount as standard comes equipped with a Pier Top Adaptor and the Skywatcher Synscan Goto Controller.
The Synscan offers a simple and reliable goto performance that can be cobtrolled independently via the hand set or via a PC running popular Planetarium software via the included PC Connection cable.
In addition a EQDir adaptor is included with the mount which can be run via the EQMod suite of software.
In addition comes equipped with Pole Finder Telescope and Losmandy compatible Saddle Plate
Our early tests have left us very impressed with the M-Uno mount.
The LINEAR mount is specifically designed for astroimagers, with some important features including
- Excellent performances in guided imaging, even with high focal lengths, up to 3 metres - Simple and original design - Really portable and lightweight, with its useful handle and a weight of only 12.5 kg, without counterweight and bar - Payload capacity up to 20 kg in imaging (best choice 15-18 kg) - High quality manufacturing, all parts are designed for long lasting use, made of anodized aluminium and stainless steel, directly milled obtained from single blocks thanks to high precision 5 axes CNC machines. - Reliable and consistent performance
- Easily suitable to the main commercial tripods, such as Baader AHT, Skywatcher EQ6 Tripod, Geoptik and several others.
The Linear Fast Reverse is an exciting and innovative new mount for high precision astro photography.
The Linear mount design has abandoned the traditional worm and gear arrangement in favour of a new transmission system based on pulleys and tooth belts, for both right ascension and declination.
However, with the pulley-tooth belt system, no direct contact occurs and the motion is transmitted by the belt working with some 50% to 90% of the girth surface. Consequently, any errors are balanced among the cogs, and are lower in amplitude with respect to the geared ones.
The Linear Fast Reverse is a German Equatorial mount design with a load bearing capacity of up to 20kg for astro imaging. It is perfect for telescopes such as the popular Celestron and Meade SCT,ACF and Edge HD designs up to 11" of aperture. It is also a very good choice for up to 6" refractors and 10" Ritchey Chretien designs including our own IKHAROS RC10 CFT Truss Tube telescope.
The mount has bveen extensively tested with up to 3m focal length instruments and has proven to give reliable pin point tracking over very long sub exposure lengths.
The Synscan offers a simple and reliable goto performance that can be controlled independently via the hand set or via a PC running popular Planetarium software via the included PC Connection cable.
In addition an EQDir adaptor is included with the mount which can be run via the EQMod suite of software.
The Linear Fast Reverse is a highly accurate and portable mount which can handle long focal length scopes easily in the field as well as in the observatory and provide the tracking precision necessary for round pinpoint stars even at the sampling rates of under 1 arc second per pixel typical with 2m or longer focal length telescopes.
Includes
Linear Fast Reverse Mount - Weight 12kg 6kg Stainless Steel Counterweight Pole Finder Telescope Losmandy Saddle Plate Pier Top Adaptor Load Bearing Capacity - 20kg for Imaging - 25kg for visual
Avalon Instruments has designed and built this new useful accessory for long exposure guiding during deepsky imaging.
The Avalon X-Guider is a high precision and play-free guidescope aligning device. Unlike conventional guidescope rings, which rely on pushing screws on to the body of the tube, the Avalon XGuider features a dovetail mounting system (GP 45mm size) for a quick-release attachment/detachment of the guide scope on the main telescope.
The X-Guider features a very compact body, an innovative design and a beautiful look. All metal aluminum parts are CNC machined. All screw knobs, designed by Avalon Instruments, have a special ergonomic design and are made with a special polymer. It features also a very hard anti-scratch anodized surface finish with CNC engraved characters.
The Avalon X-Guider is used to easily locate guide stars during astroimaging sessions and it has been designed after much experience in deepsky astroimaging.
ONe of the most innovational aspects of the Avalon X-Guider: is the ratio between the high loading capacity up to 5 Kg (12 Lbs), and the device weight, of less than 500 g. This is a very useful characteristic for portability as well as putting significantly less load on your mount.
The X-Guider mechanics are very simple, sturdy, totally free from backlash in azimuth and free from flexure in typical working situations.
Available Versions:
Standard Version (body only, without lower mounting plate)
Full Versions with lower mounting plate (male or female dovetail bar/plate)
A List of accessories is available Below