FAQ

The most important factor in a first telescope is not magnification or aperture alone. It is the combination of aperture, mount stability, and ease of use. A telescope you can set up quickly and point at the sky with confidence will teach you far more than a powerful but complicated instrument that spends most of its time in the closet.

For a first telescope, prioritize an aperture of at least 70mm for refractors or 114mm for reflectors. Look for a mount that is solid and smooth to operate. Avoid any telescope marketed primarily on its maximum magnification, as this is almost always a misleading figure. A good rule of thumb is that useful magnification is roughly 50 times the aperture in inches. A 4-inch telescope, for example, is practical up to around 200x under good skies.

Also consider portability. A telescope you will actually carry outside on a clear night is worth more than one that stays packed away because setup feels like a project. Compact Dobsonians and tabletop reflectors are excellent first choices for this reason.

A meaningful first telescope starts at around $150 to $200. Below that price point, optical and mechanical quality tends to drop significantly, and many entry-level instruments in that range will frustrate more than they inspire. The $200 to $500 range is where quality becomes genuinely enjoyable. You will find well-made refractors and reflectors with stable mounts that deliver clear, satisfying views of the Moon, planets, and brighter deep-sky objects.

If your budget stretches to $500 and above, you enter the range of instruments that will grow with you for years. A quality 6-inch or 8-inch Dobsonian in this range delivers views that will impress even experienced observers. Investing a little more at the start often prevents the all-too-common cycle of buying a cheap telescope, being disappointed, and then spending more later to replace it.

More aperture gathers more light, which means brighter images and the ability to see fainter objects. In that sense, larger telescopes do have a real optical advantage. However, a larger telescope is only better if you will actually use it. A 12-inch Dobsonian that lives in the garage because it is too heavy to move easily will show you far less than a 6-inch telescope you take outside every clear night.

Bigger telescopes also require more time to cool down to the ambient outdoor temperature, a process called thermal equilibration. A large mirror that has not cooled fully will produce blurry, shimmering images even under otherwise good conditions. For observers who want to observe casually and spontaneously, a medium-aperture telescope with a quick setup is often the smarter long-term choice.

Beginner telescopes are designed around ease of use. They typically have simpler mounts, shorter focal lengths that produce wider fields of view, and optics that are forgiving of minor alignment issues. They are built to deliver satisfying views quickly, without requiring deep technical knowledge to operate.

Telescopes designed for experienced observers prioritize optical precision, mount accuracy, and adaptability. They often feature longer focal lengths for high-magnification planetary work, equatorial mounts with precise tracking for astrophotography, and accessories like focusers, finders, and eyepiece holders engineered to much tighter tolerances. The learning curve is steeper, but the ceiling of what you can achieve is dramatically higher.

Many telescopes work well for both children and adults, but a few considerations are worth keeping in mind. Children benefit most from telescopes that are lightweight, quick to set up, and simple to point at objects. A tabletop Dobsonian is ideal for younger observers because it sits low to the ground, is easy to move, and requires no complex alignment or setup procedure.

Avoid telescopes with tall tripods for young children, as the eyepiece position can make viewing awkward or uncomfortable. The best telescope for a child is one they can operate largely independently after a brief introduction. Fostering that independence builds genuine curiosity and keeps them engaged long after the novelty of a new toy would have worn off.

A refractor uses a glass lens at the front of the tube to gather and focus light. Refractors produce sharp, high-contrast images and require virtually no maintenance. They are excellent for viewing the Moon, planets, and double stars. Their sealed tube design means the optics stay clean and collimation is never an issue. The trade-off is cost: a high-quality refractor with a large aperture is significantly more expensive than a reflector of the same size.

A reflector uses a curved mirror at the back of the tube to gather light and direct it to a secondary mirror and then to the eyepiece. Reflectors offer the most aperture per dollar and excel at gathering faint light from deep-sky objects like nebulae and galaxies. The open tube design means the mirrors can drift out of alignment over time, requiring occasional collimation, which is a straightforward process once learned.

A catadioptric telescope, which includes Schmidt-Cassegrain and Maksutov-Cassegrain designs, combines lenses and mirrors to create a compact tube with a long effective focal length. These telescopes fold the optical path back on itself, making them portable despite their large aperture. They are highly versatile, performing well on planets, the Moon, and many deep-sky objects. They are among the most popular choices for observers who want one telescope that does everything reasonably well.

A Dobsonian is a reflector telescope mounted on a simple, low-friction alt-azimuth base that sits directly on the ground or a table. The design was popularized by John Dobson in the 1960s as a way to build large-aperture telescopes cheaply and accessibly. The mount moves in two axes, up and down and left and right, making it intuitive to use without any mechanical knowledge.

Dobsonians are beloved in the astronomy community because they deliver the most aperture for the price of any telescope design. A well-made 8-inch Dobsonian can be purchased for a few hundred dollars and will show views that rival much more expensive telescopes on different mount types. The trade-off is that the simple alt-azimuth mount does not track the sky as the Earth rotates, meaning objects slowly drift out of view and must be manually nudged back. This makes Dobsonians less ideal for astrophotography but excellent for visual observing.

A GoTo telescope has a computerized mount with a motor-driven system that, once aligned to a few known stars, can automatically locate and track any object in its database. You select a target, press a button, and the telescope slews to it automatically. Many GoTo systems carry databases of tens of thousands of objects, from the most famous nebulae to obscure double stars and asteroids.

Whether you need one depends on how you want to experience astronomy. GoTo systems are genuinely useful for observers who want to see as many objects as possible in a session without spending time star-hopping. They are also a significant advantage in light-polluted areas where the limited number of visible stars makes manual navigation difficult. However, many experienced observers argue that learning to find objects manually builds a deeper understanding of the sky that makes every session more rewarding. A GoTo mount is a tool, not a shortcut to expertise.

A smart telescope integrates a camera, computerized alignment, and image stacking software into a single self-contained unit. Rather than looking through an eyepiece, you view processed images on a connected smartphone or tablet in real time. The telescope automatically aligns itself, locates objects, and stacks multiple short exposures to produce detailed images of galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters that would be impossible to see by eye through a traditional eyepiece.

Smart telescopes represent a fundamentally different kind of astronomy experience. They are exceptional for sharing views with groups, for observers in heavily light-polluted areas, and for anyone drawn more to the imaging side of the hobby than traditional visual observation. They are not a replacement for the eyepiece experience but rather a parallel path into the hobby, one that can be deeply rewarding in its own right.

Focal length is the distance, measured in millimeters, between the optical element of a telescope and the point where light converges into focus. It is one of the two most important specifications of any telescope, the other being aperture. Focal length directly determines magnification when used with a given eyepiece. Magnification is calculated by dividing the focal length of the telescope by the focal length of the eyepiece. A 1000mm focal length telescope used with a 10mm eyepiece produces 100x magnification.

Focal length also determines the field of view. Shorter focal lengths produce wider fields, which are better for sweeping large areas of sky and viewing extended objects like open clusters and large nebulae. Longer focal lengths produce narrower, higher-magnification views better suited to planets and the Moon. Focal ratio, expressed as f/number, is the focal length divided by the aperture. A fast telescope at f/4 or f/5 has a wide field and is good for deep-sky work. A slow telescope at f/10 or f/12 is better suited to high-magnification planetary viewing.

An alt-azimuth mount moves in two straightforward axes: altitude, meaning up and down, and azimuth, meaning left and right. It mirrors how we naturally point at things in the sky. Alt-azimuth mounts are simple, intuitive, and mechanically robust. They are the best choice for casual visual observing and for beginners learning their way around the sky. Their limitation is that they cannot easily track stars as the Earth rotates, because tracking requires simultaneous movement on both axes.

An equatorial mount is aligned with the Earth's rotational axis so that a single motor drive on one axis, called the right ascension axis, can counteract the Earth's rotation and keep a star centered in the eyepiece indefinitely. This makes equatorial mounts essential for astrophotography, where long exposures require precise tracking, and very useful for extended visual observation at high magnifications where even slight drift becomes noticeable. The trade-off is greater complexity in setup and polar alignment.

Polar alignment is the process of pointing the right ascension axis of an equatorial mount directly at the celestial pole, which in the northern hemisphere means pointing toward Polaris, the North Star. When a mount is properly polar aligned, a single-axis motor drive can track the sky with accuracy. The quality of polar alignment determines how precisely a telescope tracks and how long an astrophotography exposure can be before stars begin to trail.

For casual visual observing, rough polar alignment achieved by simply pointing the mount's axis toward Polaris is sufficient. For astrophotography with exposures of a minute or more, precise polar alignment using drift alignment methods or a polar alignment scope is important. Many modern GoTo mounts include software-assisted polar alignment routines that make the process straightforward even for beginners.

Autoguiding is a system that uses a secondary small camera, called a guide camera, watching a guide star through either the main telescope or a separate small guide scope. Software continuously analyzes the position of the guide star and sends corrections to the mount's motors to compensate for any tracking errors in real time. The result is pinpoint, round stars even in exposures of many minutes.

For exposures under about 60 to 90 seconds on a well-polar-aligned mount, autoguiding is optional. For longer exposures or for shooting at longer focal lengths where tracking errors are magnified, autoguiding becomes important or essential. If you are serious about astrophotography and want to capture faint galaxies and nebulae in detail, investing in an autoguiding setup is one of the highest-impact upgrades you can make.

A motorized mount has electric motors that drive one or both axes but does not necessarily include a computer or object database. A basic single-axis motorized equatorial mount, for example, will track the sky at the sidereal rate to keep objects centered once you have manually pointed at them. This is useful for visual observing at high magnifications and for basic astrophotography.

A GoTo mount adds a computerized hand controller and object database to a motorized mount. After a brief alignment procedure using a few bright stars, a GoTo mount can automatically locate any object in its database and track it. All GoTo mounts are motorized, but not all motorized mounts have GoTo capability. For visual observers who know the sky well, a simple motorized mount without GoTo is often all that is needed.

Most telescopes come with one or two basic eyepieces that are adequate for initial viewing but leave room for improvement. A good starter eyepiece kit covers three magnification ranges: low, medium, and high. A low-power eyepiece in the 25mm to 35mm range gives wide, bright views ideal for finding objects and viewing large targets. A medium-power eyepiece around 12mm to 15mm covers most planetary and lunar work. A high-power eyepiece in the 6mm to 8mm range is useful for fine planetary detail on nights of good seeing.

Beyond focal length, eyepiece quality matters significantly. Cheap eyepieces with narrow apparent fields of view, around 40 to 45 degrees, can make observing feel like looking through a paper towel tube. Premium eyepieces with wide apparent fields, 68 degrees and above, provide a dramatically more immersive and comfortable experience. Several brands in our catalog offer excellent mid-range eyepieces that represent a meaningful upgrade over basic included eyepieces without requiring a large investment.

A Barlow lens is an optical element that multiplies the effective focal length of any eyepiece used with it, typically by 2x or 3x. A 2x Barlow inserted between the focuser and a 10mm eyepiece effectively doubles the magnification, giving you the equivalent of a 5mm eyepiece. This means a single Barlow can effectively double the size of your eyepiece collection at a relatively low cost.

A quality Barlow lens is one of the best value accessories in astronomy. A well-made 2x Barlow from a reputable brand introduces minimal optical degradation and significantly extends the versatility of a basic eyepiece set. Lower-quality Barlows can reduce contrast and introduce aberrations, so it is worth investing in a branded option rather than the cheapest available. Barlow lenses are particularly useful for planetary observing on nights of good seeing when you want to push magnification without buying a very short, expensive eyepiece.

A finder scope is a small sighting device mounted on the side of the main telescope that helps you locate and center objects before viewing them through the main eyepiece. Without a finder, pointing a telescope at a specific object is extremely difficult, as the main telescope's narrow field of view makes finding targets a frustrating exercise in guesswork.

The two main types are optical finder scopes and red dot finders. An optical finder scope is a small telescope, typically 6x30 or 8x50, that shows a magnified, wide-field view of the sky, usually with a crosshair reticle for precise centering. An 8x50 right-angle finder with an erect-image prism is highly regarded for its comfort and usability. A red dot finder projects a small illuminated dot onto a glass window, showing the sky at true size with a dot indicating where the telescope is pointing. Red dot finders are simpler, faster to use, and ideal for beginners. Many experienced observers use both: a red dot finder for initial pointing and an optical finder for precise centering.

Filters are not essential for getting started, but they can significantly improve views of specific targets. A lunar filter reduces the Moon's intense brightness to a comfortable level and makes surface detail easier to see. A polarizing filter or variable polarizer is even more flexible, allowing you to adjust brightness as needed. These are among the most immediately useful and affordable accessories you can add.

Narrowband and nebula filters, such as OIII and UHC filters, block most of the light spectrum and transmit only the wavelengths emitted by emission nebulae. These filters can dramatically improve views of targets like the Orion Nebula and the Veil Nebula, especially from light-polluted locations. Planetary filters in colors like yellow, orange, and blue enhance contrast on specific planetary features. A yellow or orange filter, for example, increases contrast on Mars's surface features and darkens the blue of Jupiter's belts. Filters are one of the most cost-effective ways to improve the quality of what you see through an existing telescope.

Collimation is the process of aligning the optical elements of a telescope so that light is focused precisely and the image is as sharp as possible. Reflectors and catadioptric telescopes require periodic collimation because their mirrors can shift slightly during transport or handling. Refractors are sealed and factory-aligned, so they rarely if ever require collimation.

The easiest way to check collimation is to point the telescope at a bright star, defocus slightly, and observe the shape of the out-of-focus disk. A properly collimated telescope produces a perfectly concentric series of rings around a central dot. If the rings are off-center or asymmetrical, collimation is needed. Most reflectors come with a collimation cap or a Cheshire eyepiece can be purchased inexpensively to make the process straightforward. Collimating a Newtonian reflector takes about five minutes once you have done it a few times and makes a noticeable difference in image sharpness.

Blurry images at high magnification are almost always caused by one of three things: poor atmospheric seeing, insufficient cool-down time, or magnification that exceeds what the telescope and conditions can support. Atmospheric seeing refers to the steadiness of the air above you. Even on a clear night, turbulence in the atmosphere causes stars and planets to shimmer and blur, especially at high magnifications. Nights of excellent seeing, where stars appear as steady pinpoints rather than twinkling, are rarer than clear nights and must be sought out for serious high-magnification work.

Thermal equilibration is also critical. A telescope stored indoors at room temperature needs time outside to cool to the ambient temperature before it performs at its best. A large mirror can take 30 to 60 minutes to fully equilibrate. Viewing through a telescope that has not cooled will produce shimmering, unstable images regardless of other conditions. Start with low magnification while the telescope cools, then increase magnification as images stabilize.

The Moon is the most impressive object for most observers, revealing a breathtaking landscape of craters, mountains, and valleys in extraordinary detail. Saturn with its rings, Jupiter with its cloud bands and four Galilean moons, and Mars during opposition with its polar ice caps are among the most rewarding planetary targets. Venus shows phases similar to the Moon. Uranus and Neptune are visible as small blue-green disks.

Deep-sky objects vary widely in how they appear visually through a telescope compared to photographs. The photographs you see of galaxies and nebulae are the result of long exposures that accumulate light the human eye cannot. Visually, most galaxies appear as faint, soft glows with brighter cores. The Andromeda Galaxy is large and impressive but lacks the colour and detail of photographs. Open clusters like the Pleiades and globular clusters like M13 in Hercules are stunning through the eyepiece. Bright nebulae like the Orion Nebula show real structure and wisps of gas. The key to enjoying deep-sky observing visually is adjusting expectations and learning to appreciate what the eye actually sees rather than comparing it to long-exposure photography.

Dark adaptation is the process by which your eyes become more sensitive to faint light after leaving a bright environment. When you walk outside from a lit room, your eyes take approximately 20 to 30 minutes to fully adapt to the dark. During this time, the pupils dilate and the eye's rod cells, which are responsible for low-light vision, become more sensitive. Fully dark-adapted eyes can detect objects many times fainter than eyes that have only partially adapted.

Preserving dark adaptation while observing is important. Any exposure to white light, even briefly, resets the adaptation process and requires another 20 to 30 minutes to recover. Red light, however, does not significantly affect dark adaptation, which is why astronomers use red flashlights at the eyepiece. If you are using a phone or tablet to consult star charts, enable night mode or use a dedicated astronomy app with a red-screen mode to minimize your adaptation loss.

Seeing and transparency are two distinct measures of sky quality that affect observing in different ways. Seeing refers to the steadiness of the atmosphere. Good seeing means the air above you is stable, with minimal turbulence, producing sharp, steady images at high magnification. Poor seeing causes stars to twinkle rapidly and planetary images to shimmer and blur even in excellent telescopes. Seeing is rated on scales such as the Antoniadi scale from I (perfect) to V (very bad) and is the dominant factor for high-magnification planetary work.

Transparency refers to how clear and dark the sky is, specifically how much light atmospheric particles, moisture, and light pollution absorb or scatter. High transparency means the sky is very dark with minimal haze, allowing faint deep-sky objects to be seen at their best. A night can have excellent seeing but poor transparency, making it ideal for planetary work but poor for galaxy hunting. Conversely, superb transparency with poor seeing is perfect for sweeping for faint galaxies and nebulae at low magnification but frustrating for trying to see fine planetary detail.

Finding objects manually, a skill called star-hopping, is one of the most rewarding techniques to develop in astronomy. It involves using bright, easily identified stars as starting points and then navigating across the sky in steps, using star patterns to guide you toward your target. A wide-field star atlas or a well-designed astronomy app is essential for learning star-hopping.

Begin with the brightest and most prominent deep-sky objects, which are easiest to find. The Orion Nebula sits just below the three stars of Orion's Belt and is visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy star. The Andromeda Galaxy can be found by starting from the Great Square of Pegasus and stepping along a chain of stars. As you build familiarity with the sky, star-hopping becomes faster and more intuitive. Many experienced observers find that knowing the sky well enough to navigate manually makes every session more satisfying, regardless of whether a GoTo mount is available.

Binoculars are an outstanding tool for astronomy and are frequently recommended as a first optical instrument before a telescope. The advantages of binoculars for astronomy are significant. Using both eyes simultaneously produces a more relaxed, comfortable viewing experience and, through a phenomenon called binocular summation, actually reveals slightly fainter objects than either eye alone. The wide field of view binoculars provide is excellent for sweeping the Milky Way, scanning open star clusters, and finding objects that will later be observed in greater detail through a telescope.

For many targets, binoculars show things a telescope simply cannot match in the same way: the full sweep of the Pleiades, the grand arc of the Hyades, the Milky Way's star clouds and dark lanes. Standard 10x50 binoculars, meaning 10x magnification with 50mm objective lenses, are the most widely recommended astronomy binoculars and represent an excellent balance of light-gathering power, magnification, and portability. For serious binocular astronomy at higher magnifications, a tripod or parallelogram mount becomes important to stabilize the view.

The two numbers on binoculars describe their two most fundamental specifications. The first number is the magnification. 10x binoculars make objects appear ten times closer than they do to the naked eye. The second number is the diameter of the objective lenses in millimeters. Larger objective lenses gather more light, producing brighter images, especially important in low-light conditions and for astronomy.

A secondary specification worth understanding is the exit pupil, calculated by dividing the objective diameter by the magnification. 10x50 binoculars produce a 5mm exit pupil. The exit pupil determines how bright the image appears relative to the naked eye. A larger exit pupil is better for low-light use, but the human eye's pupil in darkness dilates to only about 5 to 7mm depending on age, so an exit pupil significantly larger than your eye's maximum dilation wastes light rather than improving the view. For astronomy, exit pupils of 5mm to 7mm are ideal.

Porro prism binoculars have the classic stepped design where the objective lenses are offset from the eyepieces. This design uses larger, physically separated prisms that provide an excellent three-dimensional viewing effect and, traditionally, high optical quality at lower cost. The stepped housing also makes Porro prism binoculars generally easier and less expensive to manufacture with high optical performance.

Roof prism binoculars have a straight, slimmer barrel where the objective lenses align directly with the eyepieces. The prisms are more compact and fold the light path within a narrower housing. Roof prism binoculars are more compact, more water-resistant, and generally more durable for heavy use in the field. At equivalent prices, Porro prisms often deliver slightly better optical performance, but high-quality roof prism binoculars from leading brands are optically excellent. For astronomy, Porro prisms are often preferred for their wide field and bright images. For general outdoor use, quality roof prisms offer practical advantages in durability and portability.

A spotting scope is essentially a compact, high-magnification monocular designed primarily for terrestrial use, though many astronomers use them for lunar and planetary viewing as well. Spotting scopes are built to be portable, weatherproof, and quick to set up. They are designed for use in daylight or low light with terrestrial subjects: wildlife, landscapes, targets at a shooting range, or maritime applications.

The key differences from an astronomical telescope are that spotting scopes produce an upright, correctly oriented image, as terrestrial viewing requires, and they are optimized for midrange magnifications, typically 20x to 60x. Astronomical telescopes often produce inverted or mirror-image views and are optimized for different magnification ranges and fields of view depending on their type. Spotting scopes are an excellent choice for observers who want a single instrument that works equally well for birding, wildlife viewing, and casual lunar observation.

Yes, smartphone astrophotography, often called digiscoping or afocal photography, is a legitimate and accessible way to capture images through a telescope. A phone adapter that holds your phone over the eyepiece is all you need to get started. This approach works best for bright targets where exposure times are short: the Moon, the Sun through a proper solar filter, and the planets.

Lunar photography through a smartphone can produce genuinely impressive results, with craters and surface features rendered in sharp detail. Planetary photography is more challenging, as the planets are small and require precise timing and stacking of many short video frames to produce clean images. For deep-sky objects, smartphone photography through an eyepiece is largely impractical due to the faint light levels involved. If you want to photograph nebulae and galaxies, a dedicated astronomy camera or a DSLR with a T-ring adapter connected directly to the focuser without an eyepiece is a far more effective approach.

A DSLR, or digital single-lens reflex camera, is a versatile camera widely used in astrophotography for its large sensor, broad sensitivity, and the ability to take long manual exposures. Connecting a DSLR to a telescope requires removing the camera's lens and attaching a T-ring adapter specific to the camera's brand. The T-ring then screws into a T-thread nose piece that inserts into the telescope's focuser, effectively making the telescope serve as the camera's lens.

This method, called prime focus photography, is the most common approach for wide-field deep-sky astrophotography. The telescope's focal length and aperture determine the field of view and image scale. For photographing large nebulae and galaxies, a shorter focal length telescope at f/5 to f/7 is easier to work with and more forgiving of tracking errors. A dedicated astronomy camera with a cooled sensor reduces thermal noise and is a step up from a DSLR for serious deep-sky imaging, but many outstanding astrophotographs are captured with off-the-shelf DSLR cameras.

Image stacking is the process of capturing many individual short exposures of the same target and then combining them mathematically using software. The process averages out random electronic noise, which varies between frames, while preserving and reinforcing the real signal from the target, which appears consistently in the same position in every frame. The result is an image with significantly better signal-to-noise ratio than any single frame could achieve.

Stacking is fundamental to modern astrophotography. A typical deep-sky imaging session might capture anywhere from 30 to several hundred individual frames, each a few minutes long, along with calibration frames called dark frames, flat frames, and bias frames that further reduce noise and correct optical imperfections. Software such as DeepSkyStacker, PixInsight, or Astro Pixel Processor automates the alignment and stacking process. The final stacked image is then processed in image editing software to bring out colour, detail, and contrast. The dramatic images of nebulae and galaxies you see from amateur astrophotographers are the result of this stacking process applied to hours of total exposure time.

The best telescope for astrophotography depends on the type of targets you want to photograph. For wide-field imaging of large nebulae and star clusters, a short focal length refractor at f/5 to f/7 with a well-corrected flat field is the standard recommendation. Apochromatic refractors, abbreviated as APO, use multiple lens elements with special glass to eliminate chromatic aberration and produce sharp, colour-accurate images across the entire field. These are among the most popular choices for serious astrophotographers.

For imaging smaller targets like galaxies and planetary nebulae, a longer focal length is needed. A Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at f/10 or used with a focal reducer at f/6 or f/7 is a popular and versatile choice for galaxy imaging. For planetary photography specifically, a long focal length telescope paired with a high-speed astronomy camera that captures short video frames is the standard approach. Refractors, Cassegrains, and Newtonians all have their place in astrophotography, and the best choice is ultimately driven by which targets excite you most.

Mount quality is the single biggest limiting factor in astrophotography, more so than the telescope or camera. A premium telescope on a poor mount will produce blurry, star-trailed images regardless of other conditions. The mount must be capable of tracking the sky precisely enough and for long enough to collect the signal needed for detailed images. A mount that introduces periodic error, flexure, or vibration will undermine the performance of even the finest optics.

The general guideline in astrophotography is to spend as much or more on the mount as on the telescope and camera combined. A high-quality equatorial mount with low periodic error, good polar alignment capability, and ideally autoguiding support is the foundation on which everything else is built. Skimping on the mount to afford a better telescope is a mistake almost every serious astrophotographer makes once and learns from quickly. Invest in the best mount your budget allows first, and build the rest of the system around it.