The SolarQuest mount is essential for tracking the sun with a telescope

Finding the sun sounds easy, right? Many people think of the sun as big and bright, but it’s actually rather small in the sky — it’s got an angular diameter of just half a degree, in fact, the same as the moon. Put an all-important solar filter on a telescope, and you’re left with the challenge of finding a tiny orange or white circle in a sea of black. Even if you manage to find the sun, nudging a solar telescope back into position every few minutes to keep it in the field of view quickly gets irritating.

Cue the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount, a simple grab-and-go product that exists to solve exactly that problem. Costing around $585/£259-£359 (the latter with a tripod), it is not a general Go-To astronomy mount and it is not trying to be one. It is best understood as a dedicated solar tracking platform for small solar telescopes. That could range from regular telescopes wearing solar filters, most likely during a solar eclipse, to dedicated solar telescopes such as white-light-filtered refractors and H-alpha (Hydrogen-alpha) telescopes designed specifically for viewing the sun.

Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head: Design

• Lightweight and compact mount head
• Simple controls make it beginner-friendly
• Vixen-style saddle suits small solar scopes

The SolarQuest mount head weighs just 2.9 lbs/1.3 kg, accepts standard 45mm Sky-Watcher/Vixen-style dovetails and can be fitted to a tripod using a 3/8-inch screw. Meanwhile, the optional tripod is lightweight and easily adjustable, with a bubble level and accessory tray. Whatever tripod you use, it’s imperative to get it stable before using the SolarQuest because its ability to track the sun successfully depends on it.

With the optional aluminum tripod — which we used in our review — the total setup is still only around 9.9 lbs/4.05 kg, making it easy to set up inside and carry into the garden. Eclipse chasers travelling abroad will easily be able to store it in a carry-on camera bag.

The mount itself has very few controls: A power button and an 8-way sliding switch. A long press of the power button finds the sun, with the second used to make manual adjustments. There are no menus and no alignment tasks.

Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head: Performance

• Finds the sun automatically in clear conditions
• Fine-tuning controls keep the sun centered
• Works well with solar telescopes

At first glance, the promise of the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head is so simple: you level the tripod using its built-in bubble or spirit level and point the attached telescope somewhere to the left of the sun. You then long-press the power button and step back. The built-in GPS calculates the date, time, and location, as well as the sun’s altitude and azimuth. The mount levels the telescope, pauses, then slews to the right altitude. Then its photodiode solar sensor (a small camera) hunts for the solar disc and locks on. In practice, the system gets impressively close to that ideal — but with some small caveats.

The sun needs to be in a clear sky, but it doesn’t have to be high. We reviewed the SolarQuest during a summer heatwave, when getting up very early was the only sensible way to observe the sun. Having got up early to take advantage of the cool morning air before the sun rose too high, we feared the SolarQuest would fail to find such a low sun. Luckily, there were no such issues, with SolarQuest taking just under 60 seconds to be perfectly aligned with the sun.

For visual observing, that’s transformative. Instead of spending the first part of a session aligning, shadow-aiming and nudging a scope into position, you can be looking at the sun within minutes. However, we did have to use the joypad on the SolarQuest to center the sun. Happily, the controls are very sensitive and move slowly, so we were able to have a perfect view of the sun in under two minutes from pressing the power-on button. That’s impressive.

Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head: Functionality

• Accurately tracks the sun
• 8x AA batteries are old-fashioned
• Payload is a limiting factor

Tracking accuracy is very good, with a tiny adjustment on the joypad required perhaps every few hours. Since it largely follows the sun’s path through the sky, it should be suitable for a total or deep partial solar eclipse, when a crescent sun could confuse the sensor (to be sure, you could cover the sensor during totality so it doesn’t hunt for the sun and try to realign during an eclipsed crescent sun).

However accurate it is, this is an alt-az mount. It can track the sun well but it cannot remove field rotation during much longer imaging sessions. For visual use and almost all solar use — including casual video capture — that is not a major issue. However, for long-duration solar imaging and creating time-lapses, it’s a limitation to keep in mind.

One practical complaint is the battery compartment. Pop open the door (which detaches and becomes easily lost) and inside is a small plastic cradle that takes eight AA batteries. As if needing to take a trip to a store before being able to use the SolarQuest wasn’t annoying enough, it occurred to me that if I was going to an eclipse, I would need to travel with at least eight more AA batteries as spares — and possibly another 16x for true peace of mind. Not a pleasant prospect. Should any gadget like this be AA battery-powered in the age of Lithium-ion and USB-C? A resounding no. The box includes a 12V DC connection but there’s no cable. It all seems poorly thought through and old-fashioned.

However, the main practical limitation of the SolarQuest is its 8.8 lbs (4 kg) payload, which sets it apart as an accessory for small solar telescopes. At its best when speed and simplicity matter, SolarQuest is a travel-friendly mount ideal for beginners and eclipse chasers seeking to remove a common frustration from solar observing — finding and tracking the sun — without adding complexity. It almost totally succeeds.

How we tested the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head

We tried the SolarQuest for about two weeks with both a Celestron Regal M2 spotting scope (with a solar filter attached) for white-light observations of the solar disk and a Skywatcher HelioStar 76mm solar telescope. The latter was used to get some images of the sun in H-Alpha (Hα), in conjunction with a ZWO ASI174MM planetary camera.

Should I buy the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head?

If you need something to support a solar or solar-filtered telescope under 8.8 lbs/4kg, the SolarQuest should be on your radar. It quickly finds the sun and tracks accurately, removing the need for manual alignment. It’s also really compact, operates quietly and has very simple controls.

The included instructions are poor, the way it’s battery-powered is far from ideal, and it’s limited by its payload capacity, but it’s so easy to use and quick to work that it’s hard to criticize the SolarQuest too harshly — it’s a slick and simple accessory.

If the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount head isn’t for you

There are very few dedicated solar trackers like the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest. However, some star trackers do have a mode where you can choose the sun as the star to track, including the Benro Polaris. Once you’ve entered the sun in the frame using the virtual joystick, the Polaris can automatically track it. Another alternative is an equatorial mount, which, when well aligned, can handle solar observing for longer periods and/or for making time-lapse sequences.