AstroMaster/PowerSeeker Motor Drive, Black

Not only does this inexpensive little guiding motor simply work...it has a (very tiny) button to adjust the drive rate. There are two brackets for different types of Celestron mounts...CG-2 and CG-3. But wait! There's MORE! One of the brackets fit my Orion Min-EQ (EQ-1) mount perfectly. I recognized this from the picture at Amazon and from searching the web. You won't get high-accuracy tracking for long-exposure photos or long-term viewing (But, what do I know?! Maybe you WILL!). But this motor will allow tracking a wider fields of view through a telescope and wide-field photography, as long as you can set your equatorial mount up to align with the celestial poles. The motor is noisy.... But who cares?!

I have purchased two of these, one for use on a Tasco 60mm telescope that I bought three decades ago, and one for use on a much sturdier Celestron - PowerSeeker 80EQ that I bought from Amazon about a year ago. Both of these scopes have equatorial mounts, which are necessary for a motor drive like this. This motor drive fits very well on both of them, since they are very similar. The motor drive comes with two brackets, to fit two different spacings of equatorial mount, and one might be able to make a special bracket if their equatorial mount is a little different. This motor drive takes away the very tedious need to hand turn the adjustment for the right ascension (“time”) axis in order to keep a celestial object in the center of the view as the earth rotates. The drive uses a clock motor, adjustable in its turning speed and strong in its torque, to subtly synchronize the movement of the scope to the movement of the earth. This enables a person to put a camera on a telescope and follow an object smoothly, without the jerking and center fixing that is inevitable when one follows an object using hand adjustments. While I do have a small computerized telescope, adding this motor drive to a manual telescope is simpler, lighter, more compact, and quite similarly satisfying. It isn't that difficult to find an object and focus in on it, if one uses a star chart or program as a guide, but with this drive it is also not difficult to keep the object centered in the scope as the earth continuously turns. What a relief.

It is great if it does what you want. Its powerful, but will not fit everywhere.

Takes a little time to master but once you learn how to adjust it with very small increments you can keep any stars, clusters, and nebula in view almost motionless if you have setup your Equatorial Mount properly and aligned with the North Star. Planets, The Moon and The Sun will stray just a bit but stay in view MUCH longer than not using this Motor. Great value for the price and like I said it's essential if you intend to do any astrophotography.

I was excited to get this motor. It was fairly easy to install. One thing of note, when installing it if you need to change the mounting bracket watch out for the bolts. The screws in the back of the unit with the mounting bracket are held in by tiny bolts. So when you unscrew it the bolts will fall, so make sure you do this carefully. After I got it all set up I went to test it out. I can hear the motor run, I double checked everything was connected correctly. The motor doesn't turn. I tried changing from north to south to see if it would even turn that way, and it did not. So I have sent it back and am waiting for another one. Hopefully, that one will work. I will update after I get it. Update: a couple of days later I got the new motor and it turns! I am excited now to hopefully try it out this weekend. I will update again after I am able to give it a try. Update: I got a chance to try it out. For starters, it does seem to work. The biggest issue I had while trying to use it was objects that are lower in the sky, such as Jupiter and Saturn early in the night in September, You can't use the motor. It gets in the way of the tube. The only way you could use it is if you are not polar aligned, which then you can't track them anyway. So I removed it and will not be using it. I should note that my telescope is the PowerSeeker 127eq.

The motor drive works as advertised for the standard AstroMaster EQ mount. It's not all that noisy but it does get in the way sometimes when pointing at some objects lower on the horizon. That's pretty easy to work around though, just point at something else for a bit until the object is in a different position. It does take a little fine tuning once you get the mount polar aligned as far as the speed goes, but after that objects stay pretty steady in the scope. It takes one 9V battery so keep one handy just in-case but it seems to last for quite a while.

This clock drive was not made for my telescope but with just a little modification I was able to get it to work without too much difficulty. It seems accurate enough for my needs. My telescope is a cheap very old 60mm refractor with an old equatorial mount. Not worth a big investment but this clock drive was inexpensive enough that I thought I'd give it a try and it works fine.

The Celestron motor drive is very cool and very, very "small".... Received it overnight.. as usual.. from Amazon.com Had already downloaded the insructions from The Celestron website. so I was familar with the unit and the installation instructions.... Proceeded to install the unit... OH MY!!! the RA shaft is TO BIG for the coupling.. a defective unit.. you say.. bad engineering....I was NOT a Happy Camper ... Called Celsetron "CS" and was greeted with a 20 minute wait.. was finally connected to a fellow.. explained the issue... He said.. I don't know what the problem is as I have a unit right in front of me and the hole is fine.. it should fit the RA shaft with no problem... I mentioned it looked like the hole had a metal sleave which made the diameter to small to fit.. .. Too bad.. He said...send it back.. to us or Amazon.. So.. being a "problem solver" by nature... I removed the coupling from the motor shaft and took a closer look at at the rubber coupling which has two screw holes... one at each end.. I reversed the two screws and it fit.. The screws were assembled in reverse order at the factory... in China..of course.... as they are both the same diameter.. How "nice" for them. So being a good "Amazon" customer... to help save my fellow customers some grief.. I called back to Celesrton and informed them of my findings.. AND... What do you think they said... OH YES... we are aware of that problem.. Well.. it appears I talked to the guy who did not get the memo.. as the second person was female... who knew all about the issue . good job... young lady.. and she expalined the fix... I called to tell them about.. When you receive your unit.. look at the rubber coulping at one end.. if the large finger screw is on the end with a metal sleave .. it is reversed... remove the coupling from the motor shaft . and reverse the screws.. replacing the small "allan set scew" at the end end with the metal sleave... THEN... the other end of the coupling will fit the RA shaft.. the one with the finger screw as as it has a larger diameter. This may sound like "greek"..BUT, when you look at the unit you will understand.. and the unit will function as designed.. If the end with the "finger screw" has no metal sleave..you are "good to go".. I was told a significant number of unts have this flaw.. the luck of the draw...for you Hold your applause.. please

Alles sehr gut

Muy bien equipo para los que no nos conformamos con ver sólo la luna. Se ven los anillos de Saturno a la perfección incluso se ven galaxias y nebulosas con una buena óptica. Las lentes que trae son las propias para iniciarse. Le he acoplado el motor de rotación y va genial

I need to drive my telescope for planet and moon pictures. I've not set up the 10Mpixel camera yet, but manually adjusting the drive speed, gets real close to ideal. Just fine for simply viewing the stars. Ran for hours on a 9 volt battery and still going. Note, you have to readjust the telescope every1/2 hour to avoid interferrence and parts running into each other. Guess a manual telescope is just not made for hours of continuously running on a motorized drive.

On time delivery. Easy to install.

A bit noisier than I expected, but does its job and was easy enough to set up. Just one thing: My telescope is a Celestron 130EQ with a CG-3 mount, and I had to flip the switch to S, even though I'm in the northern hemisphere. Also, make sure that your telescope is balanced and that the screws are not too loose.