Cheap mount for basic astrophotography?

[MortonH]

With Comets Lemmon & Panstarrs putting on good displays I'm kinda wishing I had some sort of tracking mount for some basic imaging. Budget is extremely limited just now and I'm not generally a fan of dealing with GEMs due to space constraints, power supplies, etc.

The Polarie seems nice but I'd prefer something that can carry at least my 80ED with a camera piggybacked on top.

Budget is maybe $600 max and goto not essential.

Seems I'm looking at an EQ3/EQ5 or similar. One of the cheaper Ioptrons maybe, but then field rotation is an issue.

Any other suggestions?

[Meru]

Go with a cheap second hand EQ5 and the drive motors to suit. It will do an excellent job with any light load and it's really easy to modify the hand controller to accept ST4 inputs if you wish to start guiding. Otherwise I found my RA tracking on my old EQ5 to be very good :)

Polarie is obviously smaller and easier to use but depends on what equipment you wish to use to image

[Peter Ward]

Losmandy Starlapse. Heavy duty, accurate, affordable, upgradable....but you'll need a decent (photo/vodeo) tripod.