Going for a night of astrophotography has always been a bit of an adventure for me. Because i live in a Paris with no balcony or garden I have to move out of the city every time i want to take pictures. My only mean of transportation is my motorcycle on which i've already done a few thousands of kilometers for that purpose. Because of the small amount of stuff i can bring with me with on it and considering i also need to take the camping equipement, I had to make myself a setup that is really light and does not take to much space. A lot of thougths has been into it and after some trial and error I think i've made a pretty worthy one.

My mount is the iOption Skyguider Pro with its dedicated tripod. The mount in itself is pretty good but its base and bracket are a pain to use when trying to do precise polar alignement and target acquisition. After a year of struggling with those i choose to buy the William Optics base and the Star Adventurer dec bracket. They have made me gain a lot of imaging time by reducing the time i would spend on polar alignement and target acquisition and are a big improvement from the stock mount.

At first i would use a 66/400 ED scope with a D5600 but that turned out to be a bit heavy for the mount on long exposure and the size of the scope combined with the lightness of the mount made it too sensible to wind. For that reason, and because i wanted to jump into the monochrome world, i purchased a G3M-178-M with a Samyang 135mm F/2. The Samyang is a really good scope and although it doesn't have a lot of reach, combined with the small 178 sensor, it gives the exact same field of view as a 400mm scope with an APS-C DSLR, but much brighter. Using it at full aperture does not not give good results, but at F/2.8 to F/4 depending on the filter, it is fantastic, especially for the price, and still is pretty bright.

To increase maximum exposure i could do on a single frame I've added a small yet powerfull autoguiding setup, the ZWO 120mm mini with its small 30/120 scope. Really light, it gets the job done and allow me the go from about 45 sec exposure to a reliable 2 min 30 sec and even a little more if i'm willing to throw a few subs.

This is a picture of my gear last night, I hope you guys clear skies and good continuation on this fantastic hobby which is ours.