Without some kind of mount for your telescope it would be pretty hard to use a telescope without a mount. You need something to steady your telescope.

Telescope mounts are generally broken down into different types: the altitude-azimuth and the equatorial.

Altazimuth Mounts

Commonly used with the Dobsonian telescopes, these mounts are notorious for ease of use. Altazimuth mounts are designed to hold the optical tube assembly or OTA. And if you are new to telescopes optical tube assembly is for example a Newtonian telescope optical tube assembly. It is the type of tube it uses. The altazimuth mount is designed to hold the OTA and to allow the user to guide the telescope. This is done with two motions. Altitude is the up and down motion, and the back and forth motion is called azimuth. These mounts are low to ground and are a boxy shape made of wood. All this makes for a very strong host for a heavy Newtonian reflector. The movements of the altitude and azimuth motions feel smooth almost a gliding because of low-friction bearings.

Equatorial Mounts

If you just want to point your telescope up into the sky and start browsing this is not for you. An excellent telescope mounting system, that can force you to learn celestial coordination concepts. The primary purpose of this type of stand is the tracking. The tracking is the matching of motion of the stars.

Using an equatorial mount takes more skill and conceptualization than using an altazimuth mount. The proper way to align one of these is called polar alignment. I’m not going to get into how to properly align this here. If you want to learn more specially on equatorial mounts. If you have heard of the GOTO telescopes this is the preferred type of mount for those.Placing motors on the right ascension and declination allows the computer to position the telescope on an object and tack it. Most computers have a database of celestial objects. This makes life a lot simpler. Just by pressing a few buttons on a hand unit and the mount will find the object and lock on (move with it).

For the ones just starting off in astronomy this type is highly recommended. It will force you to learn celestial coordinate. If you buy a GOTO telescope without any knowledge and the computer won’t lock onto a object you want, how are you going to find it?

Picking a good quality equatorial mount is key here. A decent motor and good gear machining will make a huge difference in your star gazing experience. And because the scope will move with your object this makes for a good photography mount. No worrying if your object has moved outside the field of view while you are taking the picture.