The L-series lineup was born out of the dream to create the most versatile and cost-effective direct drive mount. Whether your goal is capturing beautiful astrophotographs that are out of this world, tracking fast moving satellites, or tracking objects that are not in orbit, the L-series will help you reach those goals all while being extremely simple to operate and maintain.
The results of the L-series tracking performance whether at sidereal, or other rates utilized by astrophotographers, speaks for itself in these sample images captured by our customers.
(1) M101 with CDK600 by Kurious George, (2) PK 136+05 with CDK500 by Jeff Lovelace, (3) NGC 4565 with CDK600 by Kurious George, (4) NGC 225 with CDK350 by Kevin Morefield, (5) Komet NEOWISE with CDK600 by Kurious George, (6) NGC 7023 with CDK500 by Jeff Lovelace. For higher resolution images please click each link.
Tracking LEO satellites moving at velocities over 5 degrees/second is a walk in the park for the L-series mount as seen below.
Tracking the LEO tether deployed by TEPCE in this GIF shows just how amazing the L-series tracking performance is. We used a CDK24 atop the L-600 mount to entirely open loop track the LEO satellite with publicly available TLE commands issued to the mount via our PWI4 software available here.
PlaneWave Direct Drive Mounts
CDK350 Telescope system f/7.2
To learn more about our direct drive mounts for you application please contact us.
Why should you use PlaneWave L-series?
Whether your goal is astrophotography, research, or satellite tracking, PlaneWave’s L-series mounts come standard with direct drive motors for superior tracking precision and fast slewing. High resolution encoders incorporated on each axis provide rock solid tracking. In-house developed motor tuning software will automatically optimize the direct drive motor performance and mount modeling within our PWI4 software will enable accurate pointing.
Why should you use a direct drive mount?
- With a PlaneWave mount you will experience backlash-free and periodic error-free tracking thanks to the direct drive motor technology. Direct drive mounts do not incorporate gears, so offer years of maintenance-free demanding use. Direct drives are highly responsive, silent in operation, and can easily track fast moving targets such as low earth orbit satellites (slewing up to 50 degrees/sec).
- Direct drive motor performance in the PlaneWave L-series use scaled down technology we implemented in our 1-meter observatory system. The proof is in the tracking performance below!
