User: Chris Howey, United Kingdom

“I discovered Track The Stars and their Panther mount 3 years ago.

I was looking for an astrophotography mount that would be the least hassle possible to set up and operate.

15 years on since last doing any Astronomy, the problems I had polar aligning were still a clear memory. I was intrigued by the TTS Panther and after exchanging a number of e-mails with the man behind TTS, Niels Haagh, I decided I would invest in one of his Panther mounts along with the matching TTS rOTAtor which enables long-exposure astrophotography.

Now 3 years on, I can’t imagine moving back to an equatorial mount. I mainly image from home but have no room for a permanent set up. The Panther allows me to set up on my garden patio in 5 minutes. The mount amazingly requires no levelling and no polar alignment. I just place the sturdy pier in place, lift on the mount head, add the counterweights and my scope.  I then plug in the handpad and the necessary cables and I am ready to do a simple 2 star alignment. The TTS Panther handpad is just a joy to use and speeding through the menus, the alignment is soon done. GOTO accuracy is very good indeed and can be further refined though I have never found the need for this.

For guiding I use PHD2 and basically use default settings. Perhaps I could tweak these but I have always been happy with the guiding. I find the only subs I throw away are ones with airplane trails etc, not ones due to any guiding or tracking issues. I should point out here that I image at around 500mm focal length, but I see no reason for the tracking and guiding to not work well at much longer focal lengths.