Fork Equtorial Mount
The following, also very popular mount, is fork equatorial mount. As the name tells us it is one version of equatorial mounts which means that one of two axis is parallel to the Earth’s axis of rotation. In this way we avoid slewing at the both axis at the same time when capturing the astrophotos and simplicity almost always means less errors.
We find fork equatorial mounts mostly in observatories since they are more often made for bigger telescopes and not-portable. The exception here are two the biggest manufactures of astronomy equipment: Celestron and Meade. Meade’s the most popular telescope – LX200 – has this type of mount. Nevertheless, the most common use of fork equatorial mount is in smaller to mid-size observatories – mostly professional.
The fork equatorial mount exists in rough from two parts: the base and a fork. Fork is attached to the base and enables moving from East to West (R. A. axis) whereas telescope is attached in the middle of the fork and allows us to navigate from North to South (Declination axis). The main advantage of the fork equatorial mount is that it doesn’t require meridian flip – that problem occurs at german equatorial mount when is passes the meridian and has to go 360° around or it stops slewing.
To conclude, fork equatorial mounts are mostly used in the observatories, they costs much and are heavy, accurate and not-portable.
I have worked several times with fork eq. mount but I don’t like it at all! I have german equatorial at my home and it suits me the best! For everyone who needs portable and reliable mount I advise german equatorial.
Thanks for reading!
Image source: Wikipedia.org
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