[crazydoggers]

Pretty much. Definitely get the tripod right at the beginning. You can get some nice and very portable ones for not much money, and with any night photography if you want halfway decent shots, it’s a must.

And depending on how into it you get, you might not even bother with a mount for a camera. If you end up going the telescope route you’ll want a good equatorial mount for that, and typically the camera will attach directly to the telescope.

And speaking of mounts, for astrophotography, an equatorial mount is a must. It rotates along the earths axis, so it can keep the image orientation correct. If you get a mount that moves up/down left/right (they call that alt/azimuth) then your image will rotate as the night progresses.

For learning, there’s also no better place than the cloudy nights forums in my opinion:

https://www.cloudynights.com/

edit: dylans comment is also really good and tracks with my experiences as well

[samstave]

Also, garage sales for tripods.

I got a collection of ~30 tripods at a garage sale for $10 for the lot.

Some really really cool tripods - but I dont really do photography I put my houseplants on them/

https://imgur.com/gallery/l4cwHyp

[dylan604]

I think a tiny bit of me just died with the realization that this is what this poor equipment has been reduced to. A tiny tear has been shed in its honor.

Were they real or just designed to look like that? Seems like a lot of damn weight to be carrying around to hold up a plant.

[dylan604]

One thing I'd also suggest is rent, rent, rent. You can rent so many different camera bodies and lenses, that you'd be silly to not try out different things before buying. You can even rent modified camera bodies that have the IR filters removed specifically for astro stuff.

Before buying a telescope, attend star parties. People will bring out their gear and welcome you to chat and view through their gear. You'll start to see the differences in telescope types and their pros/cons. Astronomy was built on the shoulders of giants, so you can take advantage of that as well.

+1000 for cloudynights website