Star hopping

Telescopes or binoculars collect much more light, making faint objects visible, but have a smaller field of view, thus complicating orientation on the sky.

A knowledge of the relative positions of bright stars and target objects is essential.

Using a telescope equipped with a properly aligned equatorial mount, the observer may also follow the equatorial coordinate system on a star map to "hop" or "slide" along the lines of right ascension or declination from a well known object to find a target.

A simple example of star hopping would be finding Messier 13, a globular cluster in the constellation Hercules, which is too faint to be seen by the unaided eye under most conditions.

An observer using a telescope equipped with an equatorial mount would pan down from η in declination to site M 13.