to IIS Ryan.
Good move to come here and get the nitty gritty on what you need. You will find plenty of threads on this particular topic if you search through the Beginners and Equipment Disccussion forums. The SGT will not really be a suitable mount for Deepsky imaging as it really is too light for the scope (does it have an autoguiding port?). Visually it may be fine but if you want to image through an 8" SCT then a much more capable mount would be required. I would suggest you consider widefield DSO imaging or an ED80 style refractor to start with rather than the SCT anyway. The long focal length of the SCT may prove much to difficult to start with. It would be fine for planetary and lunar imagery.