|
Hi Spearo.
Much of it will depend on the type of photography you wish to do, Very wide field (piggyback), wide field (short tube refractor, short fast newt) or deep imaging with long focal lengths. Naturally the smaller the imaging system (wider field) the less demanding on the mount for accuracy and weight bearing capacity. Deep field imaging need to have very accurate tracking.
While Losmandy are good mounts there are much better ones around. It's just that they are considered relative good price for moderately good pec and carrying capacity. This is probably the main reason they get high praise and are so popular. If you want "top" mounts look towards the Astro-physics mounts. But be prepared to pay for them and wait for one.
Unguided accuracy depends on a number of things, low pec, accurate polar alignment, good balance and a mount that is suitable for the weight of your imaging equipment.
Using a poor mount even with the best autoguiding doesn't nessessarily equate to good imaging. The worse the pec the more and great the correcting needs to be. This is not a good option. The idea is to keep the guiding adjustments to a minimum. The mount that is getting the most attention these days is the EQ6 with skyscan. It seems to be doing a good job for a relatively small mount.
You don't have to have autoguiding, but it is important to have some sort of motorised tacking that can be controlled by a hand box while you manually guide through a reticle. However having a mount that is capable of taking autoguiding instructions is certainly a bonus and makes image capture much easier.
Balancing weight and carrying capacit is important for successful imaging. As a guide a mount should only carry between 40 - 60 % of its carrying capacity for imaging. The difference in % depends on the quality of the mount.
As I mentioned above, try to get a mount with as small a pec as you can afford. While autoguiding will certainly help, but it's better to not to have to make any corrections than to continually make corrections.
|