Celestron C8

[Andrew186]

Hi everyone, I am about to receive a Celestron C8 from a friend but he is keeping his S.W EQZ mount on his other equipment. 

I am thinking of getting the Star Watcher EQ35 mount . Has anybody got any feedback.

Thanks in advance. 

Andrew186

[RobertI]

I think the EQ35 would be a little on the small side to handle a C8. Are you looking to do any imaging or mainly visual? If imaging I would suggest a skywatcher EQ5, if visual and you are happy to find things manually, then a Skytee 2 would be a sturdy alt-az choice. 

[Cosmic Geoff]

I have read bad reports of the EQ35.  If it is for visual, I suggest you find a suitable alt-az GoTo mount for the C8.

If you expect an equatorial mount to work well as an all-sky Go To for visual use, you could be in for a nasty disappointment.  I found that my EQ5 Synscan would find objects well enough if all the alignment stars were to the East or West of the meridian, and one picked a target near the alignment stars.  It would also work well for any part of the sky with an imaging setup and 'platesolve & resync'.   But as an all-sky GoTo mount for a telescope with an narrow field of view it was totally useless, with a GoTo error greater than the FOV width.