[joeyjoejoe (David)]

Hello gang,
First time poster here so greetings to all.

Last Saturday I went to the Star Party at the Stockport Observatory and had an interesting time looking through several scopes before the cloud put a stop to things. A few members there recommended dobsonians as a good first scope/best bang for the buck.

I was planning to use my scope for looking at the planets (would like to see polar ice caps on Mars, Red spot on Jupiter, rings on Saturn) and hopefully some deeper space objects as well.

Over the weekend I've been doing plenty of reading and the dobsonian certainly gets a good rap on the various forums. I guess my favourite at the moment is the Orion Skyquest XT12G for $1999 but I've also noticed some unpowered dobs like Saxon 12 for $1500ish and GSO 12 for about $1100ish.

My concern is that if I buy a small scope and don't see quite see the object detail that I'm hoping for, I am likely to get disappointed and sell the scope quickly and upgrade. I was thinking it might be better to get something a little more powerful now so that I can grow into it and keep it for a long time. Also I don't mind lugging a bit of weight manual labour as I'm reasonably young and somewhat technically minded so don't mind a little bit of setup.

With all this in mind, what size dob would you recommend? Is a goto mount important at this stage? I do wonder wether it is annoying having to nudge the scope constantly or does it just become second nature? Is a collapsible/truss dob too much for a beginner?