I’ve heard on more than one occasion “the mount is the most important part of your astrophotography setup.” That’s usually followed with “focus more on the mount than the telescope” when it comes to putting together your imaging rig. Without a firm foundation a house is doomed to collapse. These suggestions and recommendations are sound.

It’s important to choose a mount and tripod that are stable, rigid, precise in their tracking abilities, rated to accept the total weight you plan to place on them during your imaging sessions and well tested with accessible and repeatable results. When it comes to stability and tracking for astrophotography your mount had better perform as advertised or your images will suffer no matter how much money you pour into your telescope and imaging cameras.

The Mount

I did my research and looked hard at several mounts. I considered several on the low-payload-weight end of the spectrum including the iOptron SkyGuider Pro, iOptron SmartEQ Pro, Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Pro and Explore Scientific iEXOS-100 with their 10-15 lbs max payload range and costing $350-$600. Some of these units are labelled “camera mounts” and not telescope mounts but they are capable for small, light-weight scopes. My current telescope and DSLR together weigh under 6 lbs. So these mounts were in the hunt and I seriously considered the iOptron SmartEQ Pro.

These are all great selections but there were things to consider like how long have they been on the market? How well have they been tested in the field? What does the astro imaging community have to say about them (pitfalls and shortcomings, etc.) because trust me, somebody will have critiqued it somewhere. What are some examples of the types of images captured with them? While these are all small portable mounts I started coming to the conclusion that for what I wanted to do they had one big negative. I was going to have a hard time growing with these mounts given their light max payload weights.

So the search continued and I also considered the Sky-Watcher EQM-35 and Explore Scientific EXOS-2GT which are rated to handle 22-28 lbs. I then turned to Meade’s new LX85 mount but they hadn’t started shipping yet and there just was not enough data to get a good impression of the mount’s performance. Next up was Celestron’s Advanced VX equatorial mount. I was initially on the fence regarding this mount having read many reviews and watched as many YouTube videos on it as I could find. But it showed promise and could handle 30 lbs. Additionally, I was easily able to find examples of images shot using this mount.

It ultimately came down to choosing a proven mount in my price range that I can grow with when I’m ready to move to a longer focal length telescope. So I chose the Celestron Advanced VX mount and so far have been very happy with its performance and tracking. I purchased the mount on sale in February 2019 for $699 + $45 for the polar scope. I find it odd that a mount of this type didn’t include the polar finder scope, but it didn’t, and it’s necessary for proper polar alignment. As I type this (Nov. 2019) the mount is now selling for $899.

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