Astronomy Notes

Some of the variables of any tripod are weight, strength-how much weight can it support? and vibration dampening ability. In the non-functional column are cost and looks. You may also consider ‘what’s available on the market?” One more factor is touching a metal tripod when it’s nice and cold versus touching a wood tripod.

A wood tripod comparable in size and weight to an aluminum tripd can usually support more weight and do a better (faster) job of dampening vibrations. The trade off is that wood tripods can tend to cost more.

What you see for sale at the lower end of the market are almost all extruded aluminum tripods. They are cheap and lightweight, and are often sold in packages. They may or may not be adequate for the package they are mixed with.

In the middle range you start to see wood. Even Takahashi has a wood tripod. There are also better made aluminum legs like the Vixen Hal 150.

Many of the Japanese scope packages over the past 30-ish years came with wood legs. This seems to becoming a thing of the past, if not already. They ranged from lightweight ones matched with EQ-1 to EQ-3 or even EQ-4 level mounts. Vixen and their importers put various wood legs under the Polaris, Super Polaris, and Great Polaris mounts, and then the various clones.

When you get up into the very heavy range you start to see tubluar metal legs, some made of steel. This is at a level where weight bearing is the “only” important issue. Usually, when you get up into this weight, say up toward 50 pounds or more of mount and scope, the mass alone will damp out any vibrations unless their is a mis-match somewhere. Well, there are some wood tripods quite capable of supporting a lot of weight, too.

But the general idea is that a wood tripod tends to have more weight bearing and faster dampening of vibrations than a similiar weight aluminum tripod.