Quote:
Originally Posted by bojan
The answer to this is money... smaller mount cost less so the profit from sale of the whole is larger.
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Exactly, you've got a tripod, a mount, an OTA, eyepieces to make up a "telescope" and while these days the OTA optics are generally good, they save money on the other items instead. Supplied eyepieces are typically a letdown as is the tripod. So as you learn and use your telescope post your progress and what letdowns you have and we can help you make upgrade or stopgap solutions.
The question of wobble and vibration through the tripod can be reduced by hanging a heavy mass in the middle underneath the tripod. Some have a small hook in place for this purpose. if not gerry rig something , ideally you want to hang from the solid part the tripod legs are bolted to, just dont hang anything from a part thats meant to move, its to keep the legs as rigid as possible. Even a breeze can be picked up by the legs and amplified up through all the equipment to wobble things.
Also as you use smaller eyepiece sizes you are increasing magnification and this can make views wobble too. This is due to atmospheric "seeing". Then there's cooldown issues common on Newtonian / mirror style telescopes, where the temperature of the thick mirror takes time to cool to the outside ambient temperature and during this period you also can experience a swimmy/wobble effect in the eyepiece from different temperature air currents moving across the face of the mirror.
So you'll learn there are multiple ways problems can occur and therefore multiple ways to address them. Ideally itd be great to be able to afford the better components but in practice we often take incremental steps in that direction as time and money allows etc.