What kind of mount does it have?<br /><br /><b>Alt-Az</b><br />This is short for altitude-azimuth, and it's a very old style of mount. Galileo's telescope was a refractor on an alt-az mount, which itself was adapted from artillery useage. When the telescope is correctly aligned, you can use the altitude and azimuth settings to aim at an object identifed by those coordinates.<br /><br /><b>Ra-Dec</b><br />Radial Ascencion/Declination. Equitorial mounts are usually annotated in this format. This is another system of astronomical coordinates. With these, you can set to a particular coordinate and there you go.<br /><br />There are drawbacks to using these settings, though. It is only as accurate as the telescope's settings, and as accurate as your positioning of the scope. If you're a bit off of true north, it'll be useless.<br /><br />So most backyard astronomers don't bother with either of these systems except as a guide to finding really difficult targets like faint nebulas or Pluto (often after checking accuracy on an easy target). Instead, they use starmaps and eyeball it. "Star-hopping" is a popular strategy: you find a star that's easy to spot and identify, then use it to help get you to a harder-to-find star that's nearby, and then use *that* star to get to an even tougher target, and so on.<br /><br />The best thing to do is get some starmaps. You can get them online from a variety of sources, such as
Your Sky or you can get planetarium software to generate them for you.<br /><br />Start with easy targets, to familiarize yourself with the process of aligning your telescope. The Moon's a great place to start, since it's hard to miss, but be warned: it's painfully bright except when it's just a thin crescent. Next, try to find some of the major planets. Right now, good targets include Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. (Saturn and Mars are approaching conjunction.) Mercury is also visible in the evening if yo <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>