Recommended Mounts for Beginning Astrophotography

I'd like to state at the outset here that this is not an exhaustive discussion, and these are not the only options. However, the mounts discussed here have been widely used for AP and have proven capable of the task.

It is also critical to state that not all individual production units of the same mount will behave the same. Simply put, there are variations in production quality and while one mount might perform extremely well, another mount of the same model may not perform as well. This doesn't even take into account the fact that the way the mount is cared for and stored, the payload it carries, the camera used with the payload, and the climate and weather conditions in which it is regularly used all play a part in the overall result a given mount provides.

With this all in mind, there are a handful of mounts that do stand out as better than others.

Primary Considerations

The purpose of the mount is to hold the telescope and camera stable, aim it at a target, and keep that target fixed in the field of view. To do so, a mount must cancel out the apparent motion of the stars caused by the rotation of the earth by matching that motion.

For the most part, this requires an equatorial mount. Though there are some ways of doing this with an alt-az mount, to do so requires additional technology and a higher degree of precision. Normally this is only found in high-end research-grade telescopes.

But not all equatorial mounts are made the same, and this has a significant effect on accuracy. For visual use, a mount need only be accurate enough to keep the object of interest in the field of view while the object is being observed. But for the kind of long-exposure imaging required for capturing deep sky objects, the object must remain absolutely still int he field of view during the duration of the exposure.