Reddit mentions of SkyWatcher Star Adventurer Photo Kit – Motorized Dslr Night Sky Tracking Mount for Portable Nightscapes, Time-Lapse, and Panoramas – Remote Camera Control – Long Exposure Imaging, Black, Model Number: S20520

There are a lot of tracking mounts on the market. Just a few of the popular ones:

• Star Adventurer - $320
  
• iOptron SkyTracker - $280
  
• Polarie Vixen - $400
  
• Nyx Tracker - $89
  
  Of these, it seems that the Star Adventurer is the best performing at ~40 arcsec of periodic error. Performance of the Nyx Tracker scales proportionally with price, but still good enough to take 5x longer exposures than without a tracker. [A disclaimer - the Nyx Tracker is my product, designed as a budget option for those testing the waters or that want a portable, light, rugged, easy to use option].
  
  

Happy to help!

Putting the 80ED on a regular (non tracking GEM) tripod will unfortunately be a waste of time if you want to shoot galaxies and other deep space objects. The issue is that they are extremely faint, and you need long exposures to capture the little light that they give off. So if the mount on the tripod is not moving along the earths axis at the same speed that the earth rotates all you'll get is a bunch of star trails. And even with a GEM mount it's still highly recommended that you use computer guiding to make up for mechanical errors while shooting. So yes, keep saving...trust me it will be worth it.

So there are smaller mounts that track the Earth's rotation albeit not as effectively as a big telescope tracking mount. This isn't a major issue however because they're designed to mount DSLR's and not long focal length telescopes. Here are a few examples of what people have shot with their DSLR and the smaller mounts:

• Orion
  
• M31
  
• Lagoon & Trifid
  
  These were shot with DSLR's and the iOptron SkyTracker you can also buy it's competitor the SkyWatcher Star Adventurer
  
  You'll need to attach that head to a sturdy tripod, and I should say that I'm not sure if this is the latest gen...you might want to look into that.
  
  There are some large objects in the sky which widefield shots (DSLR lenses) are great for. M31 is about three times the size of the moon in the sky...it's hard to capture it all in a telescope but much easier with a DSLR and wider lens. I would say that if you want to get into it at a low cost, then this is your best bet. I don't want to encourage you to try astrophotography with a telescope and your current budget because it will be so frustrating that you'll risk giving up this awesome hobby entirely.

Probably a tripod and something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Z4HVR7Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_dp_T1_AzaHzbVMZEJT3

Hi, I want to get into astrophotography. I'm an amateur photgrapher with a Sony A-37. Thing is I'm somehow limited in budget, since a good telescope is like out of my current wallet lol. I'm planning to buy this tracker as a starter, and I'm between buying this telephoto lens or this telephoto lens. I have the 18-55mm lens that came with the camera, I have made some research and for the looks of it, the 18-55mm can get the work done for capturing the Milky Way.

Am I doing a good set up for a beginner? Thanks

Sorry was being terse:

The trick is to have the duration of the star-trail stay within the airy disk of the star, to maintain a more oval object than a line. Most of my pure-camera astrophotography was done with 1000ASA monochrome and 3200ASA color film on a camera using a 1.8. 18 seconds was about the limit on the monochrome but the 3200 Konica was so grainy that I could get 23 seconds. The more choke you put on the light path the longer you need to expose it. The 18mp and larger sensors on modern cameras are getting up into the resolution of the monochrome film I used. (I did most the astrophoto at night in the winter in a Bortle 0 location.. where you couldn't see the snow you were standing in.)

So what happens when you use the tighter F-stop is you get less airy-disk to hide trails in and thus need shorter exposures to reduce the "line" effect.

You should run the lens wide open and reduce the speed of the sensor until you get the image you want. Making the f-stop tighter reduces your light gathering in astrophotography and requires either higher sensor settings or longer duration of exposure - Higher sensor settings will create distortion in the histogram and generates more base noise that has to be filtered out by circuitry that isn't designed for astrophotos.

Always run with the aperture wide open using the slowest sensor that will give you the exposures you need. Pushing the f-stop up just makes you need more exposures of shorter duration.

This is where simple clock-drive mounts come in. A clock drive mount doesn't have to be super precise to quadruple your wide-field exposures. Just about any old Tasco motorized equatorial mount will keep a 18 to 55mm lens on-track for a useful period of time, you can usually find em at the junk tables at flea markets. Or you can bust for http://www.amazon.com/SkyWatcher-S20520-Adventurer-Photo-Package/dp/B00Z4HVR7Y/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1457621801&sr=8-5&keywords=tracking+camera+mount+astrophotography kinds of systems that are portable full equatorial and programmable units.

http://www.telescope.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=9882&utm_source=google&utm_medium=comparisonshopping&utm_campaign=US-googlemerchant&gclid=CjwKEAiA04S3BRCYteOr6b-roSUSJABE1-6BL5yUVvdDtawbpb2N40vTOB9mW1evaEkTnjcIujXmfRoCIIDw_wcB huge link I know. a piggy-back for that is simple enough to cobble with rubber strips and hose clamps and then you just manually keep the star in position for a minute or so.

Lots of cheap options.