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Choosing a Mount For Astrophotgraphy
Ok so lets cut straight to the chase. Skywatcher have the best low and mid ranged mounts for astrophotography. The reason I now know this is because I paid a visit to see the man who knows everything about mounts: Dave from Dark Frame Optics. He has spent years elbow deep in synta grease hyper tuning every variety of commercial mount you could imagine. Dave says Skywatcher mounts have the advantage of using accurate stepper motors combined with a simple design which can be easily tweaked by astro tweakers like us. I wish he'd told me 5 years and 5 mounts ago!
Which mount is right for me ?
There are basically two things to think about when choosing a mount. Can the mount carry the weight of my telescope (and camera and finderscope and guidescope and guide camera) and will the mount track the stars accurately enough for me to take great astro pictures.
Lets talk about wobble
In order to take great astro pictures you need a mount that doesn't wobble. Or to be more precise you need a mount that can track objects in space so accurately that the light from a distant star always falls onto the same pixel in your camera. A little bit of wobble is ok so long as the the wobble doesn't cause the light to spill into the neighbouring pixels and blur your final image.
Trusty HEQ5: I bought it second hand and the previous owner had had the mount tuned byDave at Dark Frame Optics.
How much wobble can I get away with?
If you are using a small scope say the skywatcher 72ED and a canon 600d then every pixel would cover 2.11 arcseconds of the sky. So as long as your mount wobbles less than that then your image will be very crisp. You can work out how many arc seconds of sky each pixel of your set up covers at this brilliant website. Then all you have to do is make sure this resolution whilst guiding in arcseconds is larger than the wobble in your mount. To help you decide I have included the expected mount wobble of each of the mounts I recommend in the chart below and a dumbies link to the roughly the sort of scope you could use for astrophotography with the mount.
Overview of Best Mounts
Skywatcher Star Adventurer Pro
MORE INFO:
Super brilliant for imaging unguided with lenses. Only Guides in RA and no GOTO but does guide surprisingly well with a good polar alignment
guiding accuracy
imaging payload
out of the box
2.0 arcsec
tweaked
N/A
5kg
Can image with a
Price
Skywatcher AZ GTI wifi
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Has GOTO, controlled by phone, absolutely brilliant but there is a catch: Its a faff to set up. Please check out notes before buying.
guiding accuracy
imaging payload
out of the box
2.0 arcsec
tweaked
N/A
5kg
Can image with a
Price
Skywatcher EQ3
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Great budgety option especially if you can get it second hand and tune it yourself
guiding accuracy
imaging payload
out of the box
2.8 arcsec
tweaked
1.4 arcsec
5kg
Can image with a
Price
Skywatcher EQ5
MORE INFO:
Great budgety option especially if you can get it second hand and tune it yourself then with the extra payload this becomes the biscuit man's top budget mount
guiding accuracy
imaging payload
out of the box
2.8 arcsec
tweaked
1.4 arcsec
Officially 5kg - but I think its more like 10kg when tuned!
Can image with a
Price
Skywatcher EQM-35
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This newer model has the potential to be more accurate than either the EQ5 or EQ3 because of its larger RA gear wheel.
guiding accuracy
imaging payload
out of the box
better than 2.8 arcsec
tweaked
better than 1.4 arcsec
7kg
Can image with a
Price
Celestron AVX
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Great mount in lots of ways but limited in astrophotography by is comparatively weak guiding. Fine for scopes of up to 650mm focal length (assuming your using a DSLR (with 5ish micron pixels)
guiding accuracy
imaging payload
out of the box
2 arcsec
tweaked
N/A
5kg (can carry much more when not imaging)
Can image with a
Price
Skywatcher HEQ5 (with Rowan belt upgrade)
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Now we're talking. With a rowan belt upgrade this is a great mount. Hard to get the upgrade in the States though, having said that if you are able to tune the standard version it will perform as well.
guiding accuracy
imaging payload
out of the box
less than 2 arcsec
tweaked
1 arcsec with Rowan belt upgrade
11kg
Can image with a
Price
Skywatcher EQ6-R
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This is my recommended mount. In a league of its own. The Orion Atlas II EQ-G is actually the same mount but in a different black dress.
guiding accuracy
imaging payload
out of the box
1 arcsec
tweaked
N/A
20kg
Can image with a
Price
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