Mount for Orion Short Tube 80

[eclipsemullet]

To get me going I was going to use a camera tripod.  Would a goto mount be overkill for this scope?

[vlaiv]

Hi and welcome to SGL.

In principle - yes, but it could come in handy for some people.

Goto is useful in number of situations - when you don't want to search / star hop to your objects for example. It is also tracking mount - so it is handy for high magnification as it tracks the objects in the sky to counteract for earth's rotation.

That is mostly useful for planetary and high magnification observing as at those magnifications - targets drift out of view in less than a minute or so - and you constantly need to adjust the scope pointing.

ST80 is low power scope. It is also wide field scope. These two properties make manual use of it much more comfortable. Wide field of view makes it easier to find objects as you look at large portion of sky at once. Low magnification means that you can observe for several minutes before you need to do adjustment to scope pointing.

It is really down to preference - if you want your scope to find objects for you and you feel that tracking will be beneficial - then yes - get goto mount. Something like AzGTI will hold ST80 very nicely and it will still be light weight and portable.

By the way  - you can have tracking mount without goto - for example EQ mount with RA motor - it lets you observe at high magnifications (like lunar and planetary) for longer periods of time without need to adjust position - recommended for relaxed planetary observing at high power (again - not something that ST80 will need given that you won't be pushing more than around x80 with it most of the time)