Another new member looking for advice on a telescope. I’m after a good first telescope for that can be used at home in Perth for viewing planets and taken in the car for evening / weekend trips out of the city for better viewing of DSO. My budget is <$3k with the plan being to keep the unit for a good deal of time. The core requirements are as follows.
- Must be simple to set-up / disassemble as my partner in crime is my 5 year old son who is excited but has yet to develop a reservoir of patience
- Must be simple to quickly find objects (for the above reason)
- Must be portable in the sense that it can be packed in the back of the car (Subaru Forrester) while still leaving space for one child plus stuff
- Must be sourced from a local supplier (so that it's simple to solve if there are issues)
There is no requirement for photographs. So far I’ve identified the Skywatcher 10” Dobsonian Goto and Celestron Nexstar 8SE (or, possibly the CPC series) – with the former obviously providing better visualisation. These two units both seem to meet requirement 2 via the Go-To feature and can be purchased locally. I don’t really have a view, though as to the simplicity of set-up / disassemble for the two telescopes nor of the degree of portability. At first glance I thought that 8SE might be the answer but, knowing that the Skywater is bigger, it does look like it’d be simple to pack and set-up. It’d be great to get thoughts on my interpretation of requirements as well as potential options.
Thanks in advance for the assistance.