IT SEEMS LIKE HARDLY a month goes by when there isn't a new telescope mount debuting on the market. One of the newest to appear is the Colour Carbon Mark III German equatorial from the Chinese manufacturer Sharpstar. From the outside, the Mark III looks like your typical German equatorial mount, but there are many aspects of it that are different — and in some cases, very different. Let's start with a big one.
The Mark III is by far the most rigid mount I have ever used in its weight class. It's almost an unnatural (but certainly welcome) feeling to reach for the focus knob of a telescope on the Mark III and not have the image shake at least a little. It almost feels as if the telescope is bolted to a granite block rather than a tracking mount. And this is for an equatorial head that weighs only 7.6 kilograms but has an impressive load capacity of 22 kg without using the supplied 5 kg counterweight, and 28 kg with the counterweight.
There was a sense of the Mark III's rigidity even as I lifted it from its shipping box. It's intuitive that a
