About

Who writes this

First Rig is written by a working astrophotographer, not a review site and not a retailer. The recommendations come from someone who has assembled the trains, argued with the backfocus, and paid for the adapters that turned out to be the wrong length.

How this makes money, and why that matters

Almost every gear recommendation you can find is produced by someone paid when you buy. That is not usually corruption, it is just gravity: if your income scales with the price of what you recommend, over time you recommend more expensive things and find reasons that sound like physics.

The structural fix is to make the ranking independent of the transaction. Scoring weights are published so a ranking can be audited and disagreed with. Where affiliate links exist they are labeled and they do not move a position. And the advice is allowed to reach conclusions that produce no sale at all — buy the $349 smart telescope, keep the camera you own, wait until you have 40% more budget.

The test is simple: if a recommendation here would be different when nobody was paying, it does not belong on the site.

Corrections

If a number here is wrong, it needs fixing rather than defending. Every figure carries the source it was taken from so you can check it against the manufacturer’s own page, and anything that could not be confirmed is labeled unverified rather than quietly guessed.