Very rigid and light-weight collabsable tripod - HPS-tested - with folding dual tube upper leg design - to provide maximum rigidity and transportability.
The ARIES and the CENTAURUS II Tripods were designed specifically to support the mobile HPS-encoder technology exclusively found in portable 10Micron mounts.
Both tripods do offer the very best ratio of load capacity versus portable weight and are absolutely safe against leg sink.
Only now, after the 10Micron HPS-technology has found such widespread recognition, it becomes obvious how extremely important it is to not destroy the ultimate guiding accurracy provided by 12 million code increments (equivalent to a resolution of 0.15 arc seconds) for each mount-axis just by using inappropriate aux-equipment. Inappropriate in this sense can be a compromized tripod, the mirror-flop (or lens flop..) of the telescope optics, thin (banana-style) tubing of many commercial telescopes, wobbly economy-focusers, as well as light connections between main- and guide-telescope (in case one chooses to guide still). Any source of flex appears like being "magnified" 20-fold - while the resolution does improve by the same degree.
Thanks to the ABSOLUTE HPS-ENCODERS we also now can measure that a change in length of 1/10 of a millimeter in one tripod leg directly equals up to 10 arc-second displacement of the object observed. This also holds true in case one tripod leg is sinking into the ground just by this small amount during an imaging session. With these encoders you can see what had been unmeasurable before - and it makes all aspects of an improper telescope set up show up mercilessly.
For this reason the legs of the new tripods are made of ultra hard aircraft aluminum, fastened with way oversized spread-clamps and each tripod tip is equipped with a tiltable, hard, zero play contact plate.
Both tripods are optimized to the utmost, to bring the ABSOLUTE 10Micron HPS-accuracy straight into the ground - without compromize.
Any chain is just as strong as it´s weakest link. When using an ARIES or CENTAURUS II tripod, your 10Micron HPS-mount chain stays rock solid.
