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Originally Posted by Draco
thanks for the awesome comments guys. really appreciate it. I am more inclined to get this telescope now, keeping in mind the mount might not be the best part of it.
BTW, if one gets to know how to polar align equatorials, are these better for planets than dobs? with dobs the moves are in both axis but with the equatorials, would this be via one knob since the planet will follow its path around the southern celestial pole?
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Hi Niv,
Everything moves around the south celestial pole - planets, stars, nebula, the lot. It's a result of the earth turning on its axis, not the orbit of the planets themselves, which happens much slower. So an equatorial isn't better for a particular class of object.
In the old days, a motor-driven equatorial was luxury, because the motor would track the object as the earth turned, keeping it in the eyepiece. Nowadays, with GOTO computers, both equatorial and alt/az mounts will do that for you,so there's no real advantage to the equatorial for visual observation. Turning the knobs to keep the object in view quickly becomes second nature; don't worry about that part.
Where an equatorial mount really comes into its own is in imaging, for reasons that we don't need to go into now. You're not going to be doing that with this scope, so don't worry about the equatorial mount too much. Certainly don't get sucked in to thinking you have to do precise alignment. Point it as exactly south as you can get with the compass on your phone; set the elevation to equal your latitude, and you'll be off.