Celestron CG-5

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Celestron CG-5
Not very good. I got this for cheap with a Celestron SCT 9.25
and it was completely overwhelmed. I have tuned it as best as I can and find it is only good for 6 to 8 lb loads and then it's iffy. Completely unusable for photography except for the shortest exposures of maybe the moon. A simple alt az like the GIRO would work much better. The only saving grace is that you get it for cheap whan buying a package. I'd sell it and buy something that works better. Note mine has the old style aluminum extruded legs. THe new legs might be better but the head is still sloppy.

Overall Rating: 5
Performance:5 Ease of Use:7 Value:5
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
By:
Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=285530

Celestron CG-5
I have two of these mounts in two of its incarnations, both being more than 3-4 years old. The somewhat newer one has smoother operation than the one which is about one year older. The mount is adequate for visual use for my C8 and really inadequate for even visual use for my CR150-HD. I wouldn't dream of taking photographs with either, except for "snapshots." With both telescopes I find that I have to keep the legs fairly short. This means for the CR150-HD I'm usually sitting on the ground to use it. However, as mediocre as this mount is, especially older models, I don't see the problem as being with the mount nearly as much as it is with the telescope manufacturers/resellers who intentionally mate their scopes to an inadequate mount.

Overall Rating: 6
Performance:6 Ease of Use:7 Value:7
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
By:
Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=306513

Celestron CG-5
I would agree with the other reviews if I were using the tripod supplied with this mount. That's the real weak link in the system. The cleaning and re-lubricating of the eq head itself does help, but with the supplied tripod the scope won't really work satisfactorily for any scope. I first got my CG5 with a Celestron C8 OTA and it was always wobbly until I replaced the aluminum tripod legs with nice wooden legs from another older scope. The addition of a tripod stabilizer from Lymax and some Celestron Anti-vibe pads made it work quite well, with very little vibration from focusing or inadvertantly hitting the scope or tripod. I later got a heavy duty wooden surveyors tripod from Universal Astronomics and found it worked great now, even without the tripod stabilizer. Currently, I'm using the mount with a Celestron C9.25, along with a Telrad, 8x50 finder, and an Astrophysics 2" Maxbright diagonal, and the mount is pretty stable, with the small vibrations from focusing dying out in a second or so at high power and those from a decent rap to the tube dying down in 3 seconds or so. Even with this weight on it, the mount works smoothly and easily.

Enough about stability, onto the electronics. There's not much here to talk about, the optional drive motors work reasonably well, in my experience. Not as good as in other more sophisticated mounts, I'm sure, but they're fine for visual use, piggyback photography, and quick snapshots of bright objects through the scope. There's some definite backlash in RA, but you get used to that. I've noticed, too, that with heavier loads you really do need to make sure it's well balanced otherwise the motors do have trouble. To some extent, that goes for any mount near its carrying capacity. One note, on my version, at least, the battery pack supplies 6V (4 D cells) rather than the 12V listed in the description of the mount on this site.

So what is one to make of this mount? No, it doesn't work well out of the box, with the tripod being the main culprit. The newer, tubular steel legs improve this, I'm sure, though I'd be willing to bet something along the lines of a heavy duty surveyors type tripod would still have the edge. It may also benefit from disassembly, cleaning, and relubrication, too. Even then, it's not ever going to work as well as, say, a Losmandy G8. So why ever get one? It comes down to price. Even with addons such as a new tripod, it's about one third the cost of a G8 and not everyone has that money to sink into a telescope mount. The CG5 fills a necessary niche and fills it pretty well, all in all.

Overall Rating: 7
Performance:6 Ease of Use:6 Value:8
Weight: 5 (Veritable Vote)
Date:
By:
Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=314552

Celestron CG-5
shaky, stiff gears (older model). newer one might be a little better. will be happy when my losmandy shows up.

Overall Rating: 5
Performance:5 Ease of Use:5 Value:5
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
By:
Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=379639

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