BBC Sky at Night Magazine

Scope Doctor

- GRAEME DURDEN

We produce an EQTOUR format data file each month to accompany the printed Deep Sky Tour (see page 5 for details). Unfortunat­ely, this data cannot be imported directly into your Celestron CGX mount or indeed any other. However, both EQTOUR and your mount are ASCOM compatible. This means that you can control your mount using any ASCOM-compatible planetariu­m software like the free Cartes du Ciel and Stellarium, or paid-for programs like TheSky and Starry Night, and run EQTOUR at the same time.

Controllin­g your Celestron CGX mount using a laptop PC and a planetariu­m program is a fantastic way of locating objects to observe or image. As a bonus, you can then select each of the objects in that month’s tour using EQTOUR and instruct the planetariu­m software to slew the mount to point at each object automatica­lly.

You can connect your mount to a PC using a mini USB cable from the PC to the USB socket on the hand-controller.

 ??  ?? EQTOUR being used with planetariu­m software Carte Du Ciel
EQTOUR being used with planetariu­m software Carte Du Ciel

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