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The main part of a telescope usually looks like a tube with a few random appendages sticking out of it. The other essential component of a telescope is its mounting. The purpose of a mounting is to hold the telescope tube steady as you peer through it. A mounting must be constructed in a way that both holds the telescope steady and enables it to be easily pointed anywhere in the sky. An inadequate mounting will make the best telescope useless.
The simplest mounting is the altazimuth mounting, which may be similar to a camera tripod. On the top of the tripod is a mechanism to hold the telescope securely and which freely (but not too freely) moves both up and down and side to side. Any portable mounting is bound to be some sort of tripod. With legs constructed of metal or wood, and may be folded up for easy transport. There are permanent mountings with a heavy central column and three legs outstretched from the base, which are steady and very difficult to move about.
The difficulty with an altazimuth mounting is following an object through the sky after initially finding it. An object being magnified 50 times will move out of sight of a telescope's eyepiece after a few minutes. Under greater magnification this will happen in much less than a minute. The solution to this problem is an equatorial mount. With an equatorial mount correctly aligned and the telescope tube directed towards an object in the sky, one follow the object by twisting a single knob. Some equatorial mounts are equipped with a small motor that twists the knob for you; the object appears to stand still although it is really constantly moving through the sky.
An equatorial mount is more costly and complicated, but in my opinion well worth the price. It enables you to leave the telescope for a few minutes, return, twist a knob a bit and regain in a few seconds an object that might have taken a good half an hour of searching for in the first place.