I am a refractor kind of guy , see my sig , anyway there is a lot of plusses and minuses on both a refractor and a reflector ,
-'s on the frak , is CA ( unfocused colour on bright objects) , to get colour free you need an APO and here lies
-#2 , COST !!! an APO over 100mm or so gets very expensive and at the 6 inch size you are looking at 8-10k OTA alone , this brings us to
-#3 a Mount , to mount a 6 inch refractor you need a BIG ! mount , so in reality a 12 inch Dob is probably easier to lug around and set up
true .
Ok Reflectors ? , they suffer from a thing called 'Coma' that is the outer 25% of the mirror does not come to the same focus point as the centre and stars look like comets , this like CA can be fixed using adaptors or very expensive TV type eyepieces ,, this brings us to
-#2 , high power viewing is frustrating using a push to Dob if not set up perfectly ,
-#3 image quality , because the reflector uses a secondary there is not the snap ( contrast) a good refractor shows , I could go on and on and on but I will let others contribute here .
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There is no one perfect telescope , I like refractors ( and my C9.25 CAT ) because I am a Luna/planetary kind of guy and that's where refractors shine , IMHO ,, gotta tread carefully here
, as a good 12 inch Dob will show Jupiter just fine .
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And David ,
to IIS by the way .
I would say a 10-12 inch dob for deep space and say an ED80 on EQ5 mount for a quick look scope and dabbling in AP .
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Brian.