Sky and Telescope - May 2017 - 61

The Setup
The Evolution 9.25 ships in two boxes:
one containing the tripod, and the
other with the optical tube assembly
(OTA) attached to its single-arm fork
mount. The OTA box also contains a
hand control paddle, 40- and 13-mm
Plössl eyepieces, a plastic-bodied star
diagonal, a zero-power red-dot ﬁnder,
an AC adapter, and an instruction
manual plus an addendum sheet.
The Evolution tripod is a hefty model
with 2-inch-diameter stainless-steel
extendable legs equipped with two
metal spreaders. The upper spreader is
tightened against the tripod legs with
a knob on a threaded rod that extends
from the underside of the tripod head
and doubles as an accessory tray, while
the other folds out near the leg extensions to provide additional stability.
The combination of telescope and
fork mount weighs in at 36 pounds and
is a bit awkward to handle, with the
tube being considerably longer than that
of Celestron's 8-inch model. The scope
is easiest to set up by ﬁrst removing the
OTA from the fork and assembling the
three parts in stages. The tube attaches
to the mount via a Vixen-style dovetail
bar and saddle, and is held securely in
place with a single knob. Most users
will mount the fork assembly directly
onto the tripod and use the scope in altazimuth fashion as I did. An optional
wedge allows the telescope to be used
in equatorial mode for deep-sky imaging, and could also mitigate an issue I
discovered later on.
Lifting the light fork and its drive
base to the tripod isn't a strain, but
getting the base properly positioned on
the tripod head can be. There's a central
pin on the head that goes into a hole on
the underside of the mount's base. With
practice, it became easier to position the
base properly onto the pin, but it was
never easy. Once the base is properly
positioned, the remainder of the assembly is pretty straightforward.
After admiring the attractiveness of
the scope for a while, I took stock of the
accessories. Although most owners will
use the telescope with a smartphone

or tablet, Celestron includes the latest
version of its NexStar+ hand control.
Not only does it allow the telescope to
be operated without a smart device, it
enables control of the Evolution with a
laptop computer. But at ﬁrst, it wasn't
clear to me how that worked. The new
hand control doesn't have a serial port
like previous models. Instead, there is
a mini USB jack, and I was afraid that
would make it impossible to use the
Evolution with my astronomy software,
which requires a serial connection. I
discovered, however, that the USB connector on the hand control is followed
by an internal serial-to-USB converter,
and a laptop sees the Evolution as a
normal serial device.
The Evolution has a built-in lithium
iron phosphate rechargeable battery in
its base, and the included AC adapter
serves as its charger. The manual warns
that the battery must be charged before
using the telescope for the ﬁrst time.
Unfortunately, it doesn't explain exactly
how to do that.
A table in the back of the instruction book clued me in. The Celestronlogo power LED indicator on the fork
arm indicates battery charge, among
other things. Rapid blinking warns of a
low battery, while slow pulsing means
charging is in progress, and a steady
light means fully charged. Plugging the
charger into the power receptacle on
the telescope's control panel resulted in
half an hour of LED pulsing before the
battery was topped off.

scope way off balance - in addition to
straining the altitude motor, accidentally unlocking the altitude lock on the
mount might result in disaster if the
front end of the tube slammed into the
base. Thus, with the scope reasonably
balanced, targets near the zenith are off
limits. Owners of the Evolution 9.25

p The Evolution tripod includes a handy bubble
level to quickly level the tripod before attaching
the fork mount. A central pin helps to center the
fork base.

Under the Stars
with SkyPortal
It was time to get the Evo into the
backyard, where the ﬁrst challenge was
balancing the tube by sliding it back
and forth in the saddle with the attachment knob slightly loosened. When the
telescope was perfectly balanced, its star
diagonal bumped into the base when
the scope was pointed higher in altitude
than about 70°. I could improve on
that 70° somewhat by moving the tube
forward in the saddle.
This minor imbalance didn't cause
problems, but I was reluctant to use the

p Once the drive base is seated, the fork is
rotated until alignment marks line up with the
tripod's 3 tool-free mounting bolts.
s k y a n d t e l e s c o p e .c o m

* MAY 2017

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Sky and Telescope - May 2017

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