[janoskiss (Steve H)]

Forget the 5" Mak for imaging, but for a grab-and-go / portable it's a nice little scope. And if it's in good nick, $250 is a bargain. It's not lightweight though so you'll need a sturdy AZ mount (for grab-n-go). 8" Newtonian or larger will show you a LOT more detail though. A 10" is probably the smallest you want to consider for planetary imaging, just to get some decent resolution. 8" for visual is great and often the atmosphere (the seeing) won't let you see much more with a 10". But when you're imaging, techniques like image stacking are used to suppress the noise due to unsteady atmosphere and tease out more detail.