Ok, so had the opportunity on Monday to observe with my 8" Dob and my mate's C11 SCT and noted a few things: although larger, the image in the SCT was not more detailed as I thought it would be, in fact, when looking at Jupiter, my Dob was slightly better than the C11 and so was the moon in a 32mm EP. My mate was quite surprised and so was I to be honest! Then we looked at the Orion Nebula and the difference was very minute, in fact, the C11 won out in that the larger aperture gave a bigger image but again, the images were comparable for sharpness. I guess it showed me just how good for viewing a Dob can be: of course, the SCT is obviously made for photography and that is why my mate bought it (about 15 years ago for around $10, 000! I'll settle for observing with a Dob for $500!
