My Millenium Mount (MM)

This is one of the first Millenium Mounts made by mr Bernhard Dehnke from Germany. Capacity of the mount according to the manufacturer is 30 kg instrument weight.

This is a version with stainless steel RA and DEC axes. This mount has no encoders. I used it with the AstroElectronic FS2 controller, but a Boxdörfer controller can also be used. The maximum GoTo speed with the FS2 is now set at 200x sidereal, it can be set faster but I think 200x is more than enough on a machine that is designed to compensate for Earth's 24 hours revolution...

An accurate pole finder is included, it is similar to the polefinders used in the Losmandy mounts, very easy to use and very precise. I also have two original MM counterweights.

The mount was used on a Meade Giant Field Tripod (believe me, it IS giant!). For travel, I had a rigid aluminium box that takes the MM and the FS2 + some accessories.

It is possible to adjust the worm on the wormwheel. Depending on this adjustment, the Periodic Error will change somewhat, this also depends on the load and the balance of the mount. The image below shows a combination of maximum and minimum observed PE during a test in May 2003, made with my SBIG ST-8E and my Takahashi FS-128. The difference you see is only a matter of adjustment of the worm on the wormwheel. At present the PE is about + 7 arcseconds and the CCD camera corrects this nicely. You can use the PEC function in the FS2 to reduce this further if wanted, but I don't use this as it can interfere with the CCD corrections.

I have mounted the following instruments on my MM: C-11, C-9.25, Moscow STF 180 f/10 Mak-Cas, FS-128, all without problems, I'm sure it would even handle my C-14!

Below are some more fotos of this MM.