[expon (Jas)]

Hi,

Last Saturday the sky was clear over Melbourne. In fact it was as clear as I had ever seen it (im new to this so im sure there has been better). I grabbed my recently aquired 90mm refractor and was able to see Saturn and its rings quite clearly. This was from a place 5km from the CDB, I was pleasently surprised. Anyway I showed my wife and she thought it was nerdy but after convincing her to look she was only concerned that it was so tiny and it was moving too fast.

I wanted to buy a dobsonian scope, I have been looking at a 10" but recently have been leaning towards an 8" as most of the time I will be within city limits and it's much easier to move an 8 than a 10. But my wifes comments got me thinking about a tracking scope to follow objects. I quite like the idea of finding stuff myself however when the city lights are affecting vision that might prove more difficult.

Are dobosnian scopes a right pain in the butt to use when following something moving so fast? would a motorised tracking scope be better? Keeping in mind my wife cannot use a remote control properly so I dont think she would be too good at tweaking the controls to follow an object manually.

Am I better off going with an eq mount with motor? I am not interested in astrophotography (yet) but I do have a nice slr camera. I prefer to marvel at the sights and wonder, I don't need to photograph it.

As a second question are refractors better than reflectors? I understand the price goes through the roof however what kind of difference would there be between say a 5" refractor and an 8" reflector?


Thanks very much for all input.