to point too near the north or south celestial pole. Horseshoe mount The horseshoe mount overcomes the design disadvantage of English or Yoke mounts by replacing the polar bearing with an open "horseshoe" structure to allow the telescope to access Polaris and stars near it. The Hale telescope is the most prominent example of a horseshoe mount in use. Cross-axis mount The Cross-axis or English cross axis mount is like a big "plus" sign (+). The right ascension axis is supported at both ends, and the declination axis is attached to it at approximately midpoint with the telescope on one end of the declination axis and a counter weight on the other. Equatorial platform An equatorial platform is a specially designed platform that allows any device sitting on it to track on an equatorial axis. It achieves this by having a surface that pivots about a "virtual polar axis". This gives equatorial tracking to anything sitting on the platform, from small cameras up to entire observatory buildings. These platforms are often used with altazimuth mounted amateur astronomical telescopes, such as the common Dobsonian telescope type, to overcome that type of mount's inability to track the night sky. See also Altazimuth mount Barn door tracker Equatorial room Hexapod-Telescope List of telescope parts and construction List of telescope types Parallactic angle Polar mount - a similar mount used with satellite dishes Poncet Platform References Telescopes de:Montierung#Parallaktische Montierungen