Telescope Buying Guide: Mounts

Video Transcript

"The other half of the equation in selecting a telescope is selecting a good sturdy mount. This will make your observing a lot less frustrating. The mount I have in front of me are called altazimuth mounts. Alt for attitude, azimuth left and right. Typically very simple, lightweight, cost effective, and are ideal when you're going to do daytime viewing as well as astronomy. So a simple motion right here is just an easy way to point your telescope into the sky. With your big binoculars, this is also an altazimuth mount; very easy, up and down, left and right. Typically there's a tension control here. You can just kind of leave that tension right where you like it and the scopes will still stay quite where you leave them. These are ideal for daytime use and for getting into astronomy. However, if you're getting into a little bit higher power use, right over here, many altazimuth mounts will come with slow motion controls. As you're moving around the night sky at 60, 70, 80 magnification, just using the handle or trying to move the unit itself can be a little jerky. So right here we've got slow motion controls to help compensate for the Earth's rotation, and a lot easier to keep that object in the field of view."