[Wavytone]

Hi Tim,

In essence:

1. Aperture rules, limited by budget and portability.

2. Unless you are serious about plunging into astrophotography, forget equatorial mounts and stick to altazimuth or dobsonians.

There are essentially four kinds:

a) fully electronic GOTO telescopes which are motorised in 2 axes, these can slew to an object and track it; convenient but it makes you lazy and you'll never learn the sky properly;

b) PUSH-TO, where the scope is equipped with encoders that measure its position. A handset tells you whether to push the scope up/down or left/right to find a particular object. This is quite common with larger dobsonians; the two most popular sets of electronics are Servo-Cat or Sky Commander. Good, IMHO.

c) a modern variation on the above two involves the integration of an iPad (or similar) so that the telescope position is displayed accurately on an app on the iPad. It is also possible to have this integrated with a motorised mount so that selecting an object will make the telescope slew to it.

d) MANUAL, this is the old-school telescope, where the mount has minimal electronics and you use a star map and finder scope to find your way visually.

I'm an old-school manual kind of guy as IMHO this way you learn more of the night sky especially if you are observing often. But I appreciate (c) and am finally seriously considering a mount with all the bells and whistles as I don't get out as often as I'd like, and my observing time is limited.