Choosing a Mount For Astrophotography

which mount is right for me

best performing mounts

best budget mounts

All a mount has to do is hold the telescope and camera perfectly still so that the camera and telescope can take long exposures of the really dim and distant galaxies and nebula. Sounds simple but unfortunately the mount is not sitting on a still platform. The earth spins 360 degrees every twenty four hours and so to keep the telescope and camera perfectly still equatorial mounts spin round at exactly the same rate in the opposite direction (for an unfussy explanation of how they do this look here). To add to the complication the more zoomed in you get the more accurate your mount has to be because even the slightest deviation (aka wobble) will ruin you images. Thing is really accurate mounts cost more and until very recently weigh more so to save money and effort its a good idea to choose a mount that will do everything you need but no more…

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 mount 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.

How much wobble can I get away with?

If you are using a small scope say the skywatcher 72ED and a canon 600d dslr 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 telescope-camera resolution in arcseconds is larger than the wobble in your mount. By the way most telescopes other than the very smallest will require you to have a guide scope and camera hooked up to a computer running software PHD2 which locks onto a star and tells your mount when its tracking needs to be adjusted. This is called guiding and it reduces the wobble in your mount by a factor 10, well about 10 anyway depending on your set up. To help you decide I have included the expected mount wobble whilst guiding in each of the mounts I recommend.

Best Performing Mounts

Ok so lets cut straight to the chase. Sky- watcher have the best budget mounts for astrophotography. I have an EQM35 (see runner up below). If you’re really serious about astrophotography then you need to get the ZWO AM5. Its price is the wrong side of $2k but I’d say its still good value because this mount is a quantum leap in performance and portability from anything that went before.
Below is my video with mount expert Dave Woods. Lots of good info here but bear in mind it was shot before the new harmonic drive mounts like the AM5 hit the market.

WINNER !

(Wobble 0.5 arcseconds)

This is the best mount on the market right now for serious astrophotographers. It uses harmonic drives which were developed for Robotics. The incredible thing about this mount is its guiding accuracy and its extreme portablility. I cannot understate it, this mount is a revolution for astrophotographers. One caveat though… its really not great if you’re an observer and its not very good if you’re not guiding.

Read my full review here

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RUNNER UP !

Skywatcher EQM-35

£650: I bloomin love this mount:

(Wobble 1 (ish) arcseconds)

I bought this mount for travel astrophotography. Its part of my “new” ultimate travel scope set up although to be fair its probably a bit too big for a non mega geek to lug about on a plane. It is however definitely in the category of nice and portable. Straight away I was surprised how well aligned the polar scope was. Then when I used it with a rather too large 8inch Newtonian I was surprised by how little it wobbled. Mounts normally wobble a lot whilst breaking in. This one started out at 1.4arc seconds and dropped down to 1 arc second later in the night. WOW!  Basically if you are shooting with a small refractor ( up to about 90mm in aperture) this is all the mount you will ever need. An 8 inch newt is probably a bit too big for it, certainly I couldn’t recommend the “wow” scope because of its heavy steel tube although I seemed to just about get away with it. I am very tempted to make this the overall mount winner but if you are really serious about astrophotography then you can’t beat the AM5. Also worth noting that for a grand more than this EQM35 you can get the AM5’s little brother the AM3 which is significantly more portable and guides twice as well. The AM3 not as good as this unguided tho and if your using a scope with a focal length of 500mm or less you won’t notice the difference.

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Under $300

Sky-Watcher Az-GTI

An extremely powerful, little and affordable mount (but its a bit geeky).

az gti mount

(Wobble 2 (ish) arcseconds)

I LOVE the Sky Watcher Az-GTI mount  (I talk about this mount here). You can control GTI via wifi through an app on your phone or on your laptop.To really make this mount sing you have to align it with the rotation of the earth. That means buying some kind of wedge and counterweights and installing a firmware update which allow it to work in eq mode. So you have to be quite geeky to get the best out of this mount. And the problems son’t end there…this mount lacks a polar scope and suffers from really bad backlash in dec which doesn’t have a huge impact on the wobble but makes setting everything up MUCH harder. So beginners be warned you might want to get the more expensive but easier to use Star Adventurer GTI

AZ GTI Mount comes as an Alt Azimuth mount.

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You find the same shafts and counterweights on the old eq1 mounts 

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You’ll need some kind of wedge to convert the AZ GTI Mount into an equatorial mount. 

Generic wedge

The Skywatcher AZ GTI mount doesn’t have a polar scope, so after an initial rough alignment – simply by angling the mount to 52 degrees( which is my latitude in London) and pointing it North – I then use sharpcap software‘s polar alignment tool along with an adjustable wedge or tripod of some kind to align the mount to the rotation of the earth to with an accuracy of about  1 arc minute. Having a good quality adjustable wedge really helps you get excellent polar alignment… I actually use an old Meade deluxe field tripod instead of this  cheap wedge from skywatcher which is really designed for low focal lengths where you don’t require very accurate polar alignment. I actually sometimes get everything close with this wedge and then adjust the tripod rather than the wedge to polar align more precisely. 

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William Optic’s wedge

Skywatcher ‘s little adjustable wedge  isn’t very precise but with a bit patience it does work.  William Optic’s wedge is more expensive but from what I can see and the glowing reviews I can safely say its much better than Skywatcher’s offering although heads up I’ve never actually used it.

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STOP PRESS!!!!

Star Adventurer GTI 

 Skywatcher have just brought out the Star Adventurer GTI which I am confident will be even better than the modified AZ-GTI above.  I’d get this if you can afford it. It is nearly twice the price of the AZ-GTI mount though. I suspect Sky Watcher didn’t realise the power of the AZ-GTI in EQ mode or they wouldn’t have released the firmware hack for this inexpensive mount for free. Anyways the Star Adventurer GTI has a polarscope which makes it easier. I haven’t used it. I’m sure it’ll be good because all sky-watcher mounts are excellent but I would be surprised if it was as amazing as the EQM-35 which is a bit less portable and a bit more expensive. 

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See Also…

  • My new favourite mount: ZWO AM5

    My new favourite mount: ZWO AM5

  • The Sky-Watcher CQ350 Mount Review

    The Sky-Watcher CQ350 Mount Review

  • Best Value Telescope for Astrophotography

    Best Value Telescope for Astrophotography