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Originally Posted by Harlequin
G'day, I am interested in developing a lifelong hobby in astronomy. I live in QLD, on the Gold Coast. I am planning on driving 25 mins away from the coast to the national parks for darker skies when I have decided which telescope am going to invest in. I am prepared to invest $6,000 for long term hardware. I am interested in viewing high quality DSO?s and I do not plan on astrophotography.
I am fortunate to have a local mentor who is prepared to help me with any problems I encounter. This has reduced my newbie concerns about manually locating DSO?s with the DOB style telescopes.
Please let me know if you have any advice and tips.
Best regards
Harlequin
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Sorry, Harlequin, but I am now going to sound like a very, VERY old fart. It's good that you have someone to help you, but I still believe that the very first thing you need to buy is membership to a local astro club. Then binoculars and a basic star chart. A newcomer with a big budget is still a newcomer, and a big budget to me just means more potential to make a very expensive mistake. There is simply no substitute for looking through (and at) lots and lots of other people's telescopes actually in use.
Really, if I was in your position, I might even consider buying a 80-100 mm apo triplet on a fantastic alt-az mount with digital setting circles. The DSCs you'd be able to migrate across to any dob you get later, and I bet the refractor would always get a lot of use, one way or another. Still, I don't even want to pretend that this sounds anything like the right choice for you right now.
Cheers,
Brian.