This is the fifth of a series of articles about astronomy equipment to help you decide what you might like. If you have questions about a specific piece of equipment, and how it compares to alternatives, send a note to me at and I'll see what I can find out.

Now that we have the optics taken care of, we need to mount our telescope so that we can aim it to different points in the sky. Telescopes can be mounted on a pier for permanent installations but are usually mounted on tripods or portable bases so they can be moved from place to place.

They are either mount equatorially (which means that the telescope moves in a line across the sky that is parallel to the galactic equator and north - south) or alt-az (which means altitude and azimuth and the telescope move right - left, and up - down).

Any telescope can be mounted in alt-az, but Dobsonian reflectors are always mounted that way. Newtonian reflectors and refractors are mounted on mounts like the German Equatorial Mount. This mount has a rod that has the telescope on one end and counterweights on the other end. Compound reflectors can be mounted on the same mounts or they can be mounted using for mounts.

Fork mounts are more stable and compact, but they do not permit looking at celestial North with the telescope if equipment is mounted on the rear cell (such as a camera or a CCD). German Equatorial Mounts are able to point the telescope to any point in the sky regardless of the equipment that is being used. Fork mounts are relatively quick to assemble since they consist of basically two parts: the telescope and the tripod. The German Equatorial Mounts have more pieces to assemble, but individually, they are much lighter and easier to handle.