Editing What Telescope (section)

== Choosing a Mount ==
The mount is arguably the most important part of Astrophotography. With that in mind it is usually the most expensive single item of your setup. Mounts for astrophotography need to have good tracking, good stability and payload capacity, and the capability for autoguiding.

The first mount we recommend is the Orion Sirus (aka Skywatcher HEQ5) for your first mount. Other options exist however, depending on your budget - the Celestron AVX can be found for cheaper but isn't quite as powerful, and the Orion Atlas (aka NEQ6) is better if you're using a heavier telescope. Synta have released newer mounts (AZ-EQ6) which make several great improvements over the old NEQ6 design, but may be more expensive on the 2nd hand market. The newest model of the EQ6, The EQ6r Pro, has significant advantages over previous models, and should be included in your research.

Autoguiding is the single biggest improvement to your setup you can make once you own a mount and telescope. A mass produced mount will usually allow for 2-3 minute unguided exposures given a great polar alignment due to gear errors. Autoguiding can help with gearing and alignment error and allow you to expose for 15+ minutes. Light collection is cumulative so the longer the exposure the more faint detail in your target will be visible. This however can be adjusted to best fit your needs, as certain sensors benefit from shorter exposure times. More about this later.
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